


ain't no stopping us now

by Seekerleviosa109



Series: Left on Mars [1]
Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Chris and Mark are both on mars, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired By Tumblr, Lewis's disco tunes, M/M, a bit of everything really, all the potatoes, bad rating, bad space puns, i'll see where i'm going with this, irregular updates, mark watney is a space pirate, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 32,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5086195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seekerleviosa109/pseuds/Seekerleviosa109
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day of the evacuation was the day almost everything went to hell for Chris Beck.</p><p>This is an AU in which Beck and Watney are both stranded on Mars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The day of the evacuation was the day almost everything went to hell for Chris Beck.

At first, he felt irritated that the mission was put to a stop this early on. He had always dreamt of becoming an astronaut: going to mars was probably every small boy’s wet dream, and after only eighteen days they would have to leave.

A bit later, when they were standing around Johannsen to look at the monitor, he started to feel worried. The storm was a lot worse than they had thought. If the MAV tipped, they would be stuck on mars. If they went to the MAV now, someone could get hurt in the storm. Something could happen to their equipment in the Hab which would probably lead to the whole team being in danger. Chris shuddered and tried to forget those mental images. Commander Lewis had decided to evacuate and told them to go for the buddy-system, so they started walking in groups of 2 to the MAV. He remembers Mark joking a bit about holding hands, like toddlers walking in a line, trying to relieve the tension the team felt.

The next emotion he felt could only be described as gut-wrenching, all-encompassing fear as Mark was hit with an antenna, and he was dragged along. His com was broken, as was mark's and he could see his team searching for him. He still heard them, even though they couldn’t hear or see him. He was too far to get to them in time. That thought made him feel more alone than he had ever felt in his entire life.

When Chris looked down and saw the bar of metal sticking in Mark's side the panic he had just felt, if possible, only grew more. This was until he saw that Mark was still breathing, and the suit wasn’t leaking oxygen. He realized what must have happened: the water from Mark’s blood was evaporating and the bar, combined with the remaining blood vessels, where enough of a barrier against Mars’ unforgiving atmosphere. Chris almost started sobbing in relief right there, if it wasn't for the fact that he was in the middle of a giant storm on mars.

Chris felt grateful as Commander Lewis sent Johanssen and Vogel to the MAV and kept searching. For all she knew they were both dead and she still kept on searching for them. She tried everything she could, she really did. There was simply no way to know that they were still alive. He hated how utterly alone he felt as he tried to yell at her, even though his com was broken, while simultaneously holding onto Mark's body.

At last he felt despair and hopelessness wash over him as he saw the MAV rise up in the sky, one last bright flame before he was engulfed in the darkness from the storm, holding Mark’s unconscious body against him.

But there was one thing that made this whole fucked up situation better, and that was the fact that Mark Watney was, in fact, alive, if unconscious at the time.


	2. Chapter 1

It took a while for Chris to get Mark back inside the Hab. The first time he started dragging his body in the right direction, he hadn’t realized that the bar in Mark’s side was still connected with the antenna.

“Shit!” Chris murmured, as Mark suddenly felt back on the ground. Luckily for Chris Mark had fallen on his back, or he would have effectively killed the only other person on this planet.

This planet…

Chris looked around, as if he couldn’t believe he was really stuck on mars. He knew what he had to do according to NASA protocols if a team member was hurt: make sure you are both safe, and hold on until help arrives.

Well, if he was planning on waiting for help he was going to be waiting a goddamn long time.

Fuck that, Chris thought, he was stranded on a planet. He had the right to panic in this moment, he thought a bit breathlessly. He looked back at Mark, who was still lying on the ground. He couldn’t start losing his shit now, Mark needed him.

Chris took the knife he kept on his EVA-suit for emergencies and cut the cord that was connected to the bar. Then he began the long walk back to the Hab: half carrying, half dragging Mark's body along.

It was a pain in the ass, even with the reduced gravity, to drag Mark back to the Hab. He opened the airlock, entered the Hab, and pulled out his EVA-suit.

Mark was starting to wake up now, he started whimpering and twitching in Chris his arms.

“Come on Mark, hang on for me” Chris muttered as he quickly pulled the bar out of Mark’s side and helped him out of his suit. Mark grunted, but otherwise didn’t react. Chris placed his hands on Marks side and felt the warm blood oozing out between his fingers.  
It was like a switch had been made in Chris’ brain. He was no longer looking at one of his best friends, but instead at a patient: a patient that was in a life-threatening situation.

Chris dragged Mark’s body to the little operation room he had occupied during the first eighteen sols, and started heaving Mark's body in the operation chair. Mark started to whimper and there was a light trace of sweat appearing on his forehead.

Chris grabbed an IV drip filled with morphine before attaching it to mark, who was quickly losing consciousness again.  
Then Chris grabbed an LSI-19-001 and some forceps to start operating on him. There was a bout that still should have been attached to the bar from the antenna somewhere in Mark's body. He used the LSI to open up the wound, and immediately more blood started oozing out of the wound. Then he used the forceps to get the bout from the bar out of mark’s body. He desperately hoped that the antibiotics he had lying around would be enough to stop any infection that might arise. When the bout was out, he stapled the wound closed and used some antiseptic wipes to clean the blood and sweat from Marks body. He then injected him with antibiotics, and dragged him to his cot.

Chris was exhausted, but he knew he couldn’t rest yet. They were on mars, with no way to contact anyone, and everyone probably thought they were dead.

They were on mars.

Alone.

Shit.

‘One step at a time, Chris’ he thought, and went to get some paper and a pen to leave a note, should Mark wake up when he wasn’t around:

"I’m alive, you’re alive.

If you manage to pull out one of your stitches I will kill you.

Sincerely, Chris Beck "

‘That’ll do it’ Chris thought, and went to Vogel’s cot on the other side of the room. Normally he slept in the top bunk above Mark, but he was too exhausted to haul himself up on there and it wasn't like Vogel was going to use his bed now.

‘I wonder how they’re doing.’ Chris thought, as he slowly drifted off to sleep.

The next morning Chris woke up slowly. At first he didn’t realize anything was wrong, until he looked at his left and saw Mark lying on his cot on the other side of the room, with an IV drop still attached to his arm.

Then all the memories of the previous night came back and Chris had to fight down the urge to panic.

He would wait until Mark was awake, and then they would make a plan.

Mark would know what to do, he was always the best of thinking outside the box, which would be exactly what they need right now.  
After Chris had inspected the wound (no ooze, no red skin and no elevated temperature) he went to make himself some breakfast.

“What to do now” Beck murmured as he looked around.

They couldn’t stay here for 4 years, they would never make it. They just needed a way to contact NASA, to let them know that they’re alive. Maybe they’ll send help.

A fully-equipped team of specialist that they could communicate with would definitely come in handy as well, Chris thought.

So: they would need to find a way to contact NASA. The communication device from the Hab was broken and the MAV was gone. The only piece of equipment that was around mars and send out signals to earth that he could think of were the MAV from Ares IV, and the satellites. .

Chris’s head suddenly snapped up as he considered this idea. Maybe they could find a way to contact earth using the satellites when NASA looked at the ARES III site!

.. But would they even consider looking?

Chris scoffed, off course they would. There’s still a lot of equipment on the Ares III site, they barely used anything for their mission. NASA would also like to know if something was damaged during the storm. All Chris needed to do was find a way to send a message to let them know that they were alive, and they would be set.

After checking up on Mark again, Chris went to do a customary check of everything in the Hab that was keeping them alive. The storm was still raging outside and would last for a couple more days. They just had to hope that nothing will damage the Hab or he and mark will, you know, implode. Chris sighed, he will need to work on his positive thinking now that he was stuck on Mars. He got a feeling that the one thing they'll need the most was hope. He made sure they were using the smallest amount of energy possible: the solar panels had no way of getting any sunlight with the density of the storm that was still raging outside. He also had to start thinking on how to contact NASA.


	3. Chapter 2

The first thing Mark became aware of was that he was feeling comfortable and warm. This in itself was odd, considering that the last thing he remembered was getting hit by a piece of debris in the middle of evacuation. He blinked slowly, as his eyes adjusted to the light and he was able to look around him.

The Hab was a bit of a mess: clothes where lying on Johanssen’s bed, Vogel’s bed was unmade, and the worktable in the corner was filled with different pieces of paper. Mark snorted, if Lewis saw their sleeping quarters right now she might actually turn the Hermes around just to give them all an earful.

That would be nice.

But he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He could feel the wound in his side, and he knew that the crew would have taken the MAV to the Hermes without him. They’re already on their way home and he’s stuck on mars. He remembered enough about last night to at least be certain of this.

He wondered why Vogel’s bed was unmade though: the man always made sure his bed was made up and that there wasn’t a single crinkle in the sheets.

And how did he even get inside? How come he’s not lying around on the Martian surface, feeling sorry for himself with an antenna sticking out of his side.

Mark looked around him for an answer until he found the piece of paper Chris had left behind. He picked it up carfully and read it.

That doesn’t make any sense at all. How is Chris even here? Mark remembers the evacuation; he remembers being hit by the antenna. The crew would have thought he was dead, and-

And he was still holding Chris's hand while flying around in the storm.

He dragged Chris with him.

Chris was stuck on Mars because of him.

Oh god.

“We should have just waited it out” Mark said to himself, staring miserably at the top of his bunk bed.

He doesn’t know how long he had been frowning at the ceiling, but suddenly he heard a shuffling noise coming in his direction. Mark quickly put his face back in a neutral expression as, big surprise; Chris Beck entered the sleeping quarters.

“You’re up!” Chris exclaimed. Mark saw his shoulders relax a little, and some of the tension around his eyes disappeared.

Mark had to fight down the urge to roll his eyes. Trust Chris to start making obvious observations.

“Well actually I’m lying down” Mark said dryly.

Chris rushed to his side and immediately started mother Henning him.

He’ll probably call it ‘a necessary medical checkup’ but Mark liked to think Chris just couldn’t keep his hands of him.

It was a nice thought.

“Are you still feeling any pain somewhere? I wasn’t expecting you to wake up for another hour or so.”

“What, are you going to kiss it better if I do?”

He fully expected Chris to roll his eyes at him and maybe playfully call him an idiot. So what he wasn’t prepared for was Chris licking his lips and then biting on the lower one while staring at him.

Mark was pretty sure that if Chris had hooked him up to a heart monitor, they would both be able to hear Mark’s heart rate speed up.

That would have been awkward.

He wasn’t blind, and neither was the rest of the crew. Dr. Beck was pretty damn nice on the eyes. Mark wasalso pretty damn sure he saw Johanssen checking him out once in a while and, being the self-proclaimed bestie and older brother of Beth, had decided to back off in case they ever got seriouswith each other. Even though NASA decided to be the biggest cock block in the universe and had decided to forbid astronauts from developing relationships in space.

Mark wasn’t going to lie: he had fantasized about fucking in space. What astronaut wouldn’t? And if Chris might have had the lead role in a lot of his fantasies, than that was only for him to know.

But off course Dr. Beck wasn’t just going to be good looking. No. he had to make it worse by being a funny, kind, and all around brilliant person. Mark had never met someone so perfect before and oh god he was sounding like a teenage girl.

Chris Beck made him sound like a teenage girl.

And he probably wasn’t even doing it on purpose, the bastard.

But that was all beside the point. Mark was pretty sure that Beck and Johansson had been making lovey-dovey eyes at each other the entire trip to Mars, and he wasn’t going to be an asshole about it. He was happy for them, he really was.

That wasn’t going to help them a lot right now, seeing as Beth was on the Hermes and Chris was here with him.

“I don’t know if you realized this already, but the rest of the crew is on the Hermes and they probably think we are dead.”

Mark sighed. “We should have used the cables from the rover to stop the MAV from tipping.”

“Well, you know what they say. Hindsight is 20/20.”

Chris settled himself on Marks bed while he talked and Mark suddenly became physically aware of the place where they were touching each other. This was beyond pathetic; it wasn’t even skin on skin contact, there were at least a couple of layers of clothing between them.

Get a grip, Watney.

And now they were alone on Mars, left behind by their crew.

The crew had left.

And he knew they would never choose to leave them behind.

Mark knew that it wasn’t their fault, that they would do anything for each other.

They didn’t have a choice; the MAV was going to tip.

He couldn’t help it though, a small part of him was mad. Logically he knew that they had thought he was dead, but that didn’t stop him from feeling betrayed. He was only human after all. They had gone through a lot together, and the crew was like his family. A small part of Mark was also glad he wasn’t stuck alone on Mars; he can’t even imagine how he would deal with that being all alone on this fucking planet.

Not that he was going to admit to any of that.

Blaming people wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

This wasn’t the crew their fault. It was Mars’s fault.

Stupid red planet.

Chris, oblivious to Mark’s inner dialogue, kept on talking to him: “-at least 8600 Newton. I have never before even heard of a Martian storm that was this strong. Normally the atmosphere is too thin for such strength to show up in a storm. The diameter was at least 1200 km so we’ll have to wait a couple of days for the storm to be over.”

“What happened after I was hit? The details are a little fuzzy.” Mark admitted.

Chris opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it again and looked away and stayed silent.

Mark was just about to say that it was fine, and he didn’t have to talk about it if he didn’t want to, when Chris started to speak again:

“I managed to grab your hand when you were hit by the antenna. Both of our bio meters where broken, but luckily my suit wasn’t breached. I saw everyone spreading out to look for us. I could still hear them talking, but they couldn’t hear me anymore. I tried to yell for them, but it didn’t work. It was awful.”

Chris looked at him in that moment and Mark had never seen him look more vulnerable.

“You idiot.” Mark said softly, without any heat, “why didn’t you just go to them. For all you knew I was dead. You could have been on the Hermes right now.”

Chris looked at him in disbelief. “I wasn’t going to leave you behind!” He exclaimed.

And in that moment, Mark fell in love with him a little more. The way he looked shocked at his comment, like it wouldn’t even occur to Chris to leave him behind. It was too much, Mark averted his eyes quickly.

“Anyway, the MAV started tipping, so Lewis sent the rest of the crew to Martinez and kept on searching. Martinez used some OMS to give Commander Lewis more time to search for us. They even tried the proximity radar, even though infra-red can’t go through a sand storm. They were desperate, and they tried everything they could. It wasn’t their fault.”

“I know” Mark said softly.


	4. Chapter 3

The room was heavy with tension, and Chris was looking around for a way to distract Mark from their situation.

“So, what now?” Mark asked Chris, dragging the ‘so’ out for a while. He was looking like he was going to get up and do something stupid. Just to worry him. And then he would accidentally pull out a staple and make him worry even more.

Now, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

Not on his watch.

“Now you have bed rest until your wound has healed enough to take the staples out.”

“What? No way! I’m not going to just lie here and do nothing while we’re stuck here! Come on, Beck! It wasn’t even such a bad wound, barely a scratch really. I’m perfectly fine!”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m not, I’m Mark Watney! I’m hurt Beck, truly. I thought you at least knew my name after knowing each other for years, but I guess I was wrong.” Mark said, while pretending to wipe tears from his eyes.

“You think you’re funny right now?”

“I think I’m hilarious.”

“No seriously, you have to stay in bed. Do you even know what’ll happen if you pull out a staple?”

“You’ll just have to fix it again” Mark said simply, refusing to break eye contact with Chris.

Chris sighed. “You might force a staple out if you move around too much. We really don’t want you to over exert yourself. It’s a miracle in itself really that none of your organs were hit by that bar! If you move around too much the wound would reopen, it would bleed everywhere and you would have an even bigger chance of getting infected. You’re already on antibiotics and if that wound gets infected you will probably be resistant to the antibiotics I gave you after I closed it! So you are going to stay in bed, nice and easy, and you’re not going to come out until I say so.”

“All right, all right, I surrender. Can you at least give me my drive? I’ll watch a movie or something. It’s somewhere in my drawer.”

Chris went to the desk and started to look through Mark’s drawer, but he couldn’t find it anywhere. There were files on the different plants, little pieces of equipment that Mark used to fix things around the Hab, some pictures of the crew,..

“Are you sure it’s in here somewhere?” Chris asked, lifting some pages about the growth of plants in a 0,4G environment. When he looked back he could see that Mark suddenly looked a lot paler. He immediately rushed to Mark’s side and started panicking.

“Are you all right? Where does it hurt? Mark? Mark, talk to me!” Chris yelled.

Chris wasn’t even aware that he had crossed the room to Marks bed, but suddenly he found himself checking Mark over for any possible injuries.

“I'm fine! I'm fine. It's just my disk.” Mark said “I let Martinez borrow it for a while, there was this movie…” Mark trailed of. And then Chris knew what Mark was talking about.

Everyone had a little disk with their personal stuff on, and everyone had taken their own disk with them during the evacuation. Except for Chris, he had forgotten his own disk on the Hermes. At the time he hadn’t really minded, they were only going to be here for a month after all.

But this also meant they didn’t have any entertainment at all.

“I’ll look in the other drawers, maybe someone left their disk behind.”

Chris started searching, but he knew that the odds weren’t exactly in their favor. That was, until he started searching through Lewis's drawer.

“Jackpot!” Chris exclaimed, while waving Lewis's disk around.

“Thank god, I might actually kiss Lewis once this is all over.” Mark said.

Chris handed the disk and a computer over to Mark, who was looking ready to burst from excitement. Then he turned back around to close all the drawers by the desk again.

“All right, let’s see what music we have.” Mark said as he pushed himself up until he was leaning against the wall with his back, and the computer was placed on his thighs.

After a moment of silence Chris turned around and looked to see what Mark was up to just in time to hear him yelling: “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”

“Come on Mark, it can’t be that bad.” said Chris, while walking back to Mark so that he could look over his shoulder what all the fuss was about.

“This isn’t just ‘bad’, this is worse than ‘bad’. We have about 150 disco songs thanks to Commander Lewis, nothing else. I might actually die on this planet. Oh god Beck, I won’t survive this!”

“Well, maybe it won’t be so bad. What’s the best song we have?”

Mark scrolled through the songs, until one of them caught his eye. “Hey! If I play ‘life on mars’ now, will that choice be a bit too obvious?”

Chris just raised his eyebrows at Mark.

“Yeah, thought so. But ‘I will survive’ is coming as a close second.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

Mark didn’t bother to reply, and suddenly the Hab was filled with ‘Ain’t no stopping us now’ from McFadden and Whitehead.

Mark tried to look as innocent as possible at Chris, who just rolled his eyes at him.

“Just stay here, okay? I’ll go and see how much food we have left.”

“Will that be all, Dr. Beck?” Mark joked, with a little smile on his face.

“That’ll be all, nurse Watney.”

“Hey!”

Maybe he should be a little more professional at the moment, but Chris liked to believe that comment was completely worth the pillow to the face that he got.


	5. Chapter 4

While Mark started watching Happy Days Chris made his way to the kitchen. He started off by making some coffee for himself, he got a feeling he might need it. After he had the change to drink a bit of coffee he took a notebook and a pen so that he could write down all the food they had left. The next thing he did was taking all the boxes with the food packages out of the cupboards and putting them on the table.

Their food packages are filled with rehydratable food. This basically means that the water is removed from the food on earth to make it easier to store and to last longer. So if they wanted their food to be eatable they would have to hope for the waterreclaimer to keep doing its job. 'One problem at a time' Chris thought to himself, and stared at the boxes filled with rehydratable food. Then Chris started to do the math:

The mission was supposed to last for 31 sols, and NASA had given them food to last 68 sols for 6 people. That’s 408 days’ worth of food that they had at the start of the mission. The storm hit them in the morning of sol 18 which means that they still have 912 food packages. Between the 2 of them, that will get them to sol 152 without rationing.

The food packages of NASA are filled with the necessary vitamins and minerals, which has been tested and ensured by a whole team of nutritionist on earth. So Chris didn't need to worry about a lack of vitamins and minerals from the food packages. They might not taste like much, but they were filled with everything the human body might need. They also have a lot of vitamin pills with them so that they would never have an insufficient intake of vitamins. Now they would need to decide how much they can ration. Normally people need around 2.000 calories in one day to function normally. Those friendly earth nutritionists have made sure that each astronaut gets at least an intake of 2.800 calories a day, because they have to work hard all day. It also wouldn’t do for one of the astronauts to faint while on a job, which could lead to a whole bunch of dangerous situations.

Now, they could both survive on 2 meals a day, which would mean that they would be below the required 2.000 calories a day. This is something Chris really doesn’t want to do, because it can cause pretty bad side effects in the long term. But if they only eat 2 meals a day, than they would both be able to survive until sol 228.

However, if they don’t take in enough calories, they will start to lose weight and strength.

The human body really fascinates Chris. For example: if the body doesn’t get enough calories, than the metabolism will slow down. Because the metabolism burns calories, it will only burn a few calories once it slows down. So basically our body recognizes that it’s starving and will try to stop itself from wasting too much calories.

One of the first signs of severe malfunction will be if the urine output stops or if the constipation changes, after that the blood levels will drop. Then the less vital organs will stop receiving enough blood. As long as Chris kept a good eye on both Mark and his own health, they might be able to make it to sol 228, but afterwards…

‘That won’t be enough. We’re not going to die here!’ Chris thought angrily. He got up from where he was brooding and started looking through the other drawers. He kept looking until he found a large black box with a note stuck to it on the top. The note read: ‘Do not open until thanksgiving!!’. Chris gave a wry smile as he placed the box on top of the communal table.

"Sorry commander" Chris said as he pulled the lid of the box and threw it aside.

Inside the box where 24 potatoes, 4 for every member of the crew, wrapped tightly in plastic so that they would stay good until it was time to eat them.

Chris exhaled softly and started smiling to himself. Mark was a botanist, and a damn good one at that. If anyone could find a way to cultivate the potatoes, it would be Mark.

Chris remembers Mark talking about how great his experiments were coming along, he was testing to see how plants were growing in an environment of 0G and 0.4G. Perhaps he'll find a way to cultivate.

He put all the boxes of rehydratable food in the drawers and started to make his way back to their sleeping quarters. The Hab was eerily quiet. Normally, you could always hear someone talking, or at least some music, but now it was completely quiet. It was unnerving.

Not so unnerving yet that Chris had started to miss Martinez's snoring, but still.

When Chris opened the doors to their sleeping quarters he was greeted with the theme song from happy days.

“You know, I might have given Lewis a lot of shit about this show, but it isn’t actually that bad. Don’t tell her I said that though.” Mark said, not even moving his eyes from the screen.

“We have enough food to last us to sol 228 if we ration.” Chris said bluntly, while Mark moved to the side of his bed and petted the now empty space next to him so Chris could come and sit beside him.

Chris relented, and went to sit next to Mark. It was peaceful, sitting next to Mark and hearing him breathing in and out softly. It was assuring him that Mark was fine, he was here, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

“My math might not be that good, but I’m pretty sure that means we won't survive until the Ares IV crew gets here. We’ll still need 3.5 years of food for the two of us.”

Mark lowered his head on Chris’ shoulder after he said this, and Chris tried very hard not to think about the feelings he got. It felt like he was constantly aware of Marks head on his shoulder, and he wanted Mark to stay close to him.

“But there’s still some good news!” Chris said, hoping to cheer Mark up. “We have the potatoes from thanksgiving. I was thinking that maybe you could use them? We have 4 potatoes for every member of our crew, so that’s 24 potatoes. ”

“That’s...” Mark trailed off, “I could work with that. I could definitely work with that. So, I have until sol 228 to make at least 3.5 years’ worth of food on a planet where nothing grows”

At this point Mark had lifted his head back from Chris’ shoulder to look him in the eye. “Wow Beck, aren’t you lucky I’m a botanist.”

Then Mark smiled wildly at Chris, and it was the first time since the MAV left that Mark had cast a genuine smile at Chris, who felt his breath catch a little. Mark was beautiful this way, and Chris wished he would smile more at him like that. Suddenly Chris felt a surge of protectiveness wash over him which confused the hell out of him. Why did he feel this way? Mark was only supposed to be his friend, nothing more. It didn't make sense to him.

“We should be pretty thankful for these potatoes. Did you know that potatoes have the highest calorie yield per unit land area of any crop on earth? One potato is about 110 calories.” Mark said, already thinking about all the possibilities. They could survive, they could make it out.

Suddenly Mark laughed out loud: “Take that, Mars!”

“Mark, you’re talking to a planet.” Chris said, smiling at him.

“So? It’s not like it’s going to talk back. You wait and see Beck; Mars will come to fear my botany powers!” Mark said, and suddenly he got a determined look in his eyes. “We need dirt.”

Mark made a move to get up, only for Chris to push him back on the bed and stop him.

“If you even think about getting out of bed today-"

“Oh come on Beck, I’m fine!”

“You were stabbed yesterday, you are not fine.”

“All right Dr. Bossy Beck. No need to rub it in.” Mark muttered, easing himself down on the bed again.

“We should at least wait until the storm is over, before starting to haul dirt inside. It’s still too dangerous to go outside with the storm so we’ll just have to wait until it’s over. According to the last update we got from NASA, the storm was supposed to last 3-4 days.”

“All right, I can rest for a couple of days I suppose.” Mark said. “What do you suggest we do in the meantime?”

“Well, How far have you gotten with that TV show?” Chris said, as he made himself more comfortable next to Mark.

Mark nuzzled in his side as Chris put an arm around his shoulders. It was comforting, Chris supposed, as Mark laid his head on Chris’ chest and they started to watch a new episode.

After a while Marks breathing evened out, and he was holding Chris' shirt in one hand tightly, as if afraid Chris will simply get up and leave him while he was asleep.

Chris shut down the laptop after the episode ended and put it on the floor beside Mark’s bed. After that he pulled the blankets closer around Mark's body and pulled Mark back against him.

After a while Chris began to fall asleep to the slow rhythm of Mark's breathing. The last thing he remembers is pulling Mark just a little bit closer to him, and Mark humming contently against him in response.


	6. interlude

Mark slowly became aware of the fact that he was sleeping next to someone else. He could feel the body heat of another person through his shirt, and his head was lying on someone else's chest. Their legs were intertwined and he could hear this person’s heartbeat. By then he also became aware of the fact that the only other person who could possibly be lying next to him was Chris.

Mark was in quite a comfortable position, even though his wound was still hurting him. He moved around a bit until he was resting with his head on Chris’ shoulder and he was breathing in his smell with every inhale.

While Mark was moving Chris had unconsciously shifted and tightened his left arm around Mark. He knew that he probably had to get up, that it wasn't right to stay here, lying in Chris's arms. But he stayed there, because it didn’t hurt as much this way, not being with Chris, if he could at least pretend in this moment that they were together, that Chris loved him.

Mark sighed quietly, as he held onto Chris a bit more tightly. His wound was really starting to hurt him, but it was worth it.

After a while Chris began to wake up slowly.

“Mark?” Chris whispered. “Are you awake yet?”

Mark froze for a moment before answering. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to wake you yet.”

“That’s all right” Chris said sleepily, while rolling his head in Mark’s direction.

“This is nice.”

After a while Chris got out of bed to get them both a meal and, after checking if the storm was over yet, crawled back in to the bed next to Mark. Mark felt relieved. He thought that maybe it was something stupid, but it was nice, being able to touch Chris so freely, to lay his head on his shoulder again.

That day they stayed in bed, and they spend most of their time watching happy days and talking quietly with each other.

It was one of the best days they’ve both had in a long while.


	7. Chapter 5

It has been a couple of days since the MAV took off, and now the storm is finally over. It happened somewhere in the early hours of sol 21. They went to sleep to the sound of the howling wind and little pieces of debris hitting the side of the Hab, and they woke up to quietness. When they got up and looked outside, they could see that everything was calm once again, and that the sun was shining brightly.

Mark had started to cross out dates on the wall of the Hab in a red marker. Chris thought this was completely unnecessary seeing as the computer keeps counting sols until the Hab main system is shut down, but Mark insisted that ‘it’s just like ‘cast away’ Beck! Besides, it’s not like NASA is going to stop me’ so he wasn’t going to bring it up again.

At least Mark was allowed to move around again.

Right now they were sitting at the kitchen table, having just eaten another meal, and discussing how they were going to survive 4 years on a planet where nothing grows.

“All right, according to the lay-out plans we have about 126 cubic meters of space that we can use to plant the potatoes in the rec room. We’ll have to empty the rec room though, and we’d best cover it up with plastic before we put all the dirt in it. Then we’ll have to plant the potatoes and we’ll have food! Easy as that!” Mark said while gesturing wildly around him.

Chris thought it was adorable. Whenever Mark became passionate about something, he won’t drop the subject for hours and keep talking while gesturing wildly around him trying to explain certain aspects. It was one of those things that made Mark who he was and Chris liked to see that side of him coming out now and again.

“For the soil to become viable, we’ll need about 40 liters of water per cubic meter of soil. That’s more water than we have at the moment, even if we stop using it to shower and drink.”

“I can try and find a way to make water. I might not be as good as Vogel, but I’ve studied a lot of chemistry. Perhaps I could use the fuel from the MAV platform...” Chris mused. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll take out all the stuff from the rec room today and cover everything up with plastic, and then I’ll start to bring in the dirt tomorrow.”

Mark looked mad at him. “If you think I’m going to just laze around in here while you bring all the dirt inside you’re wrong! It’ll take much longer if you work alone and this is important. Time is of essence in this case, Beck!”

Chris groaned. They'd already discussed this earlier, but Mark didn't want to give this one up. Why did he have to be so stubborn? Not that he was one to complain about stubbornness...He felt like he was stuck between two choices. As a doctor, he wanted Mark to rest as much as he could. All the hauling around would definitely put a strain on him. If it was up to him, Mark would still be in bed for another couple of weeks. But he knew Mark would never agree to that, so he had made a deal with him after they woke up on sol 20. He would be allowed to walk around as long as he didn’t strain himself too much.

But as a fellow astronaut on the other hand, he knew how precarious their situation was. They didn’t know how good the plants were going to grow until they actually tried it.

But they needed to know as soon as possible if the potatoes would grow; so that they could start making another plan as fast as possible if it doesn’t work out. It is kind of ironic though, they went on a mission to test if it was possible to cultivate on mars, and now they were going to have to cultivate on mars in order to survive.

However, Chris was still going to fight Mark on this as much as he could. If he had even a chance of convincing Mark to rest more, he was going to take it. He worried constantly about him, and Mark being in more pain than necessary wasn’t going to help him in the long run. Mark being in pain also made Chris feel ill with himself. He wasn't supposed to be in any pain. 

“I cleared you for walking around, not for heaving heavy piles of dirt around for an entire day” Chris said bluntly, hoping for Mark to see his reasoning.

“The sooner it’s done the better; if we don’t start planting soon and it doesn’t work we might not have enough time to come up with another idea.”

“You promised you wouldn’t strain yourself!” Chris cried, looking at Mark in disbelief.

“You know I don’t break my promises. I won’t strain myself. I’ll tell you as soon as I’m starting to feel bad. That way I can help you and I’m still keeping my promise.”

“Good, good.” Chris said, he could work with that. As long as Mark kept his word he would be safe. Or at least as safe as possible in their current situation.

They started out in the rec room by laying all the loose objects in boxes and putting all those boxes outside. All the stuff in the rec room wasn’t essential for their continued survival, so they decided to just drop all the boxes next to the Hab.

Mark had started to clean the solar panels after lifting them up again with Chris's help, while Chris heaved the heavier stuff out of the rec room and into the airlock. That way he was still doing essential work, only without straining himself.

Afterwards they both covered the floor of the rec room with plastic, and hung plastic around it so that they had an entire space surrounded by plastic. When they were done they looked proudly at one another. They had achieved much today, and they had started to work on a plan. They were going to make it.

But their moods spiraled down when they went back to their sleeping quarters for the evening. All the personal items of the other crew members were still lying around. It was painful to watch.

Mark and Chris quickly agreed to put all the stuff that didn’t belong to them away. It was too difficult to look at otherwise. Like all of this was just a nightmare, but now they both woke up in the morning and looking around made being stuck on Mars seem less real, only to be confronted with the reality as soon as they woke up fully. It had only been a few days and they were already missing the crew painfully. A lot of questions were going through their minds. How are they doing? Who will Martinez joke with now? Who will discuss Chemistry with Vogel? Who will annoy Lewis? And who will treat Johanssen like a little sister and have geeky discussions with her? What if something breaks on the Hermes and Mark isn’t there to fix it for them? What if one of the others becomes sick and Beck isn’t there to help them get better?

Mark smiled sadly at Chris after they put Lewis's pictures in her box and put the box with the others on Vogel's bed.

Chris couldn’t stand it. Mark wasn’t supposed to look so sad, it rubbed him the wrong way. He went over to Mark, and before he could question the surprise on Mark’s face, pulled him in a bone crushing hug. It felt nice to hold him, Chris thought, it felt right somehow. Like his whole life had been leading up to the moment that he would hold Mark like this. He started to slowly rub Mark's back while speaking to him in a soothing voice.

After a moment Mark started sobbing against his shoulder. It was a heart wrenching sound, but Chris just held on to him, hoping to sooth at least a little bit of his sorrow this way. He knows that it must hurt Mark a lot, being stuck on this planet. Hell, it was hurting him to.

But he had to be strong, if not for him than for Mark. He had to get them out of here, and he was sure that they’ll find a way. Together.


	8. chapter 6

For the next couple of days they started to haul as much dirt as they could inside the rec room, or as Mark had started calling it “Potoooooooo farm”. When Chris had looked at him weirdly he had to explain where he came up with the name.

 

_“No chris, it’s true! Pot-8-Os was a famous race horse in the 18th century. This guy who worked in the stables thought his boss meant pot-8-Os when he said the name, so he just wrote ‘Potoooooooo’ on potatoes his feed bin. And his boss thought it was funny, so the race horse was named Potoooooooo instead!”_

_“That is the most ridiculous story I’ve ever heard.” Chris said, while he smiled at Mark with that soft smile he only let Mark see. “So you see why we HAVE to call our farm that? We have to honour these two 18th century men and their good sense of humour.”_

_Ah. Good times._

_Mark slid an arm around Chris as he said this to Chris, and looked proudly at all the dirt that they had managed to get inside the rec room. His side was killing him, but he wasn’t about to tell Chris. They almost were almost halfway, and if he stopped now to rest Chris would insist on doing the rest of the work on his own. The work was a lot harder to do than Mark had expected though. They were only supposed to bring a bit of dirt at a time in the Hab for research, and their suites weren’t made for all the hauling-the-dirt-inside which is what they had been doing for the last couple of days._

_Mark gritted his teeth as he and Chris went back outside to start working on the dirt again. He wasn’t about to suggest a break however. He could do this. He was Mark fucking Watney, and a little pain wasn’t going to stop him from achieving his goals. He would be able to do this._

Mark looked around his room. He hadn't been able to do it.

Apparently if you start seeing black spots ignoring that is not a good idea. Who knew? Off course Chris just HAD to look his way just as Mark had begun swaying back and forth.

So now Mark had been on forced bed rest as a punishment, and to say he didn’t like it would have been an understatement.

Mark wouldn’t have minded his medical setback that much, but then Chris had turned those damn puppy eyes of his in his direction, and he looked so disappointed at him it nearly broke Mark’s heart.

So now Chris was working on his own, which led to a lot of free time on Mark's part. Now he was trying to make calculations on how to manipulate the plants growth in as little time as possible to maximize it, but Chris was distracting him.

Or rather, the thought of a working, sweating Chris, shirtless and slowly walking towards him with a smirk as he licked his lips and-

Yep. Chris was distracting him.

Mark always thought that Chris would never develop feelings for him. That he and Johanssen where a thing. But ever since he fell asleep in Chris his arms it was getting harder and harder to stop thinking about Chris in that way.

It was like a switch had been made in Mark’s brain. And even though that was the only night they had slept together, without even sleeping together, Mark found himself making excuses to be close to Chris, and to touch him whenever he could. Just innocent things, like laying a hand on his shoulder, all types of short lingering touches that he couldn’t for the life of him hold back anymore. He used to be able to deal with this, but Mark had always been tactile with other people. This wasn't really a problem with a crew of six; but now he was going to be alone with Chris for years.

Mark wanted to stop this, he really did, because if Chris noticed and he wanted to talk about it, to tell Mark that he didn’t feel the same…

Well, that was bound to make things a bit awkward between them.

Mark knew that Chris would still try to be friends with him, because he was a nice guy like that, but it would be hurtful, and it would change things between them.

And if Mark thought he couldn’t make this situation possibly any worse, being stuck on a planet with only the guy who friend zoned you seemed like it could do the trick. So Mark tried to keep quiet and keep his feelings to himself.

Mark hummed to himself as he started to look at his calculations again. He would have to use all the enriched soil from earth they had brought along if he wanted this to work. If he kept some aside in case this plan didn’t work he won’t have enough of the enriched soil for the potato plants to grow.

He just wished he could help Chris work right now. He was bound to have aches after working on his own for days on the dirt. It was sol 31 now, and he had only been able to help with the work until sol 25. The only good thing Mark could think of was that Chris was almost done, and if he had healed enough when all the dirt was inside he would get another chance. He just had to rest enough and he’d be fine.

Mark sighed. He wasn’t going to get any work done today. He had already triple checked all his calculations, but he kept on rechecking them. He had to be sure everything worked perfectly. Their lives depended on it. After a while he decided to just re-watch an episode from Happy Days. Maybe it was stupid, but he didn’t want to start watching the new episodes without Chris. They watched one every night, and they laughed and made jokes about it while they were watching. It was kind of their thing now. So Mark was stuck re-watching those damned episodes over and over again. But he would always smile as he came at a part that he would remember because of some joke he and Chris had made at the expense of the cast.

After a while Chris came into the room, looking sweaty, tired and annoyed. That last part probably had to do with the fact that Chris had decided to work with music, more specifically commander Lewis her disco music. Mark shuddered. He understood why Chris did it though, he didn't want to work in complete silence for an entire day, but Mark wasn't allowed to leave his bed, so he couldn't cheer him up by talking with him from their little communication center in the Hab. They couldn't contact earth because their antenna was in pieces, but they could still have localized contact with the EVA-suits.

“Hey.” Mark said softly, “come sit next to me. Fonzie has just arranged the seating plan and everyone is going crazy about it.”

Chris hesitated for a second before sitting at the side of his bed, and Mark started to feel horrible. Maybe Chris just indulged him all the time without showing it, and he was finally getting tired of Mark’s behavior. Mark knew that something had changed between them since they were on Mars, it would be impossible not to. He had almost died, and then they were stranded by themselves on a desolate planet. He just thought that there had been something going on between them since the storm. Maybe he was looking into it to much.

“I’m sorry, I probably smell awful by now.” Chris said and Mark tried to hide his relief. He shifted around a bit until his head was lying on Chris's shoulder and inhaled deeply.

“I only smell some good old _eau de mar_ s, nothing wrong with that.” Mark said. “Although, if you’re that bothered you could always shower.”

“I know I just don't want to waste too much water by showering.”

Mark lifted his head up to look Chris in the eye before he answered.

“Well, if its water you’re worried about we could always take a shower together” Mark said while wiggling his eyebrows at Chris.

“It’s not just that." Chris said, and Mark took great pride in the blush that Chris got. But then Chris his eyes became distant and he started speaking again. "We’re going to run out of toiletries. We’re also going to have to ration on the toothpaste. It's just...If we use it all up now, we won’t have enough later and we might damage our teeth too much. This might seem unimportant now, but I’m not actually able to treat cavities and those can hurt like hell. Not that cavities will matter much if something happens to the watterreclaimer. Or if the Hab gets breached. oh god. I'm sorry i said that. I shouldn't have brought it up! i just...”

“Hey!” Mar said as he saw Chris get more and more agitated with every word he said. He turned sideways and watched as Chris started to breath heavily through his mouth.

“Hey” He continued, much more softly, “It’s going to be alright, we’re going to be alright, okay? We’re going to be fine. I promise”

He ran a soothing hand up and down Chris's back, all the while talking in a soft tone to him. It didn’t matter much what he said, as long as Chris was able to calm down again.

“I’m sorry.” Chris said again quietly after he had calmed down a bit. Mark could see that he didn’t want to talk about it, so he tried to distract Chris. It’s what he always did, when there was an argument with the crew members. He made everything all right again with a joke or two.

“That’s ok, but you’ll have to be the one to use Johanssen's shampoo though. When I tell everyone of how I survived Mars, I’m not going to tell them I did it smelling like roses.”

Chris snorted and pulled himself upright again.

“I actually came here to tell you something. Your ‘potato farm’ is ready to go, all the dirt is inside.”

“What! Why didn’t you tell me sooner? This is great; I’m going to take the shit.”

“Hold up, Watney!” Chris said as he caught him by the arm. Damnit. Can’t Chris see that he’s on a mission here? He had shit to collect!

“I’m going to clear you first. If your wound is even a little bit inflamed, you won’t be getting up until we’re off this planet.” Chris threatened him.

“All right Dr. Bossy Beck.” Mark muttered as they slowly made their way towards Chris's little medical corner in the Hab. Mark took his shirt off and felt immediately better as he saw Chris ogling him for a moment. It wasn’t very long though, before he started to push Mark back and started to inspect the wound.

The wound was looking pretty good thought Mark, it was healing very nicely and Chris kept him on pain-killers that took away some of the pain. They were both being pretty strict about it though. Who knew what could happen to them in the four years that they were going to spend on Mars.

“It’s looking good, there’s no inflammation… But it isn’t as closed as I would like it to be. I’m sorry Mark”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m fine!” Mark protested. He didn’t want to do this again. Ever since he was hit by that stupid antenna Chris had been mother henning him. He knew he would be able to work, and he could deal with the bit of extra pain it brought.

“No! You need to rest, just another day. I promise. Just one more day of resting and you can try to help again, as long as you take it easy, and i want daily checks.” Chris said, putting his hands on his hips for good measure while trying to stare Mark down.

“Will you at least stay with me?” Mark asked, hating how unsure he sounded. “It’s just that it gets a little lonely after a couple of days of bed rest on my own.” Mark said, while looking down at his feet that he was swinging lightly back and forth.

“Sure.” Chris said, his eyes softening a bit. “We still need to know what happened after Richie and Potsie lost their money in that poker game.”

He took Mark's hand in his and tightened his grip for a moment before they both made their way towards back their sleeping quarters.


	9. chapter 7

The next day they started off by bringing all the organic waste from the crew inside. Chris began making the lines that they would use to plant the potatoes, and Mark was busy mixing all the human waste together with water and the enriched soil he had from earth.

Ah, some good old fashioned earth soil bacteria. They only had a small amount of Earth soil to start with, but with the right environment the bacteria would soon start to reproduce exceptionally.

“Jesus, Johanssen!” Mark said as he held one of the little silver bags that held Beth’s organic waste in it as far away from his face as he could. The smell of it nearly made him gag.

“Did you expect it to smell like roses too?” Chris asked amused from the other side of the room.

Mark snorted. As soon as he had started mixing all the shit together Chris had suddenly started working on the other side of the room, as if that was going to help with the smell.

Well, you couldn’t fault him for trying Mark supposed. The smell was horrendous.

“Well, no. But i didn't expect it to be this awful, this is just bad. Here, smell it!” Mark said, holding the silver bag out in Chris’s direction. Chris wrinkled his brow and shook his head.

“Thanks Watney, but I’m good over here.”

They were working silently for a moment, before Mark started talking again without making eye contact.

“You can call me Mark, you know?”

Chris looked over at him. He could see the tension in Marks shoulders, and the way he was, very conveniently, turned around so he didn’t have to see Chris's reaction. On the team everyone had always addressed each other with their last names. It was silly, but Chris got a feeling that this will somehow make everything more personal. He felt surprisingly at ease with that thought.

“Then you should call me Chris.” Chris said, as he watched as the tension sipped out of Mark's frame.

After a while Mark took the bucket of shit, made his way to the first line and started to plant the potatoes. He had cut the potatoes in pieces earlier, and he had also placed the bowl filled with the pieces next to him. Mark put his working gloves on and put a dump of the shit in the line. Then he covered it up with some dirt, shoved the potato piece on top of the dirt and covered it up with some dirt again. Afterwards he gave the little plant as much water as he could to make sure it would survive and grow.

Chris had started to help Mark after he was done, and soon all the potatoes were planted. Mark sighed happily as he watched their little project thrive.

“Just think about all the potatoes we’re going to eat! We’ll have so much food; this is going to be amazing! We could even try making potato soup!”

“I’ve never eaten potato soup before. Is that even a thing?” Chris asked turning to look Mark in the eye.

“I’m pretty sure potato soup is a thing. By the way, have you found a solution for our water problem yet?” Mark asked.

NASA had sent 300 liter of water to mars for them, and they were using most of it for the plants right now, but they were going to need more if they wanted to keep their plants alive. A lot more.

“Well, it’s quite obvious actually. If you want to make water you take hydrogen, you add oxygen and you burn it. Now, getting oxygen won’t be a problem because we have the oxygenator, and later on the plants will produce oxygen by themselves. If we need more, than we can always use the collection of co2 that’s stored in a tank by the MAV. We can get about 125l of O2 daily.

As for the hydrogen...

The fuel plant from the MAV has hundreds of liters of hydrazine. Now, every molecule of Hydrazine consists of four atoms of hydrogen. So we will be able to change every liter hydrazine in that tank in hydrogen.

We will need to make a catalyst that will separate the hydrazine in h2 and n2, than we direct the h2 in a small space and burn it.

Judging by the amount of hydrazine we’ve got left, we can make about 600 liters of water. That’ll be more than enough to keep your potato plants content.”

“You know” mark said “I really like it when you get all nerdy like that. It makes you look sexy.”

“I...uh…” Chris stammered.

“Lovely shade of red you’re turning by the way.” Mark said, smirking at the blush that was rising up on Beck- no Chris his cheeks.

“Shut up” Chris muttered.

They went to the kitchen to eat one of their rationed meals in silence, and Chris could tell Mark was starting to get bothered by something. It was amazing how close people could get during space travel, how easy it became over time to read the others faces and know immediately how they were feeling.

Mark, for example, would start making more jokes and innuendos if he was bothered by something, and Martinez was exactly the same. Lewis would not be subtle about it; if something was wrong she would let it be known. Johansson would get grumpy and Vogel would just quiet down. Chris knew himself well enough that he always started to ramble about one of his scientific projects if he was uncomfortable.

Chris sighed as he leaned back in his chair. He could probably guess why Mark was in a bad mood: They hadn’t really talked about it, but yesterday had been a hard day for the both of them. It was the day that the Ares III crew was supposed to leave mars. Chris hadn’t brought it up, and Mark hadn’t either, so they had just sat together and watched some ‘Happy Days’. Chris snorted: they hadn’t even finished season 1 and Chris was already getting annoyed by the theme song.

“We’ll best go and get the hydrazine right now. We’ll need to be extremely careful though, hydrazine is insanely toxic.” Chris said, trying to start a conversation again.

“I wonder what Martinez would say.” Mark said suddenly.

“And we’ll also need to- wait what?” Chris looked Mark in the eye, and eventually mark looked up at him.

“What would Martinez say? We’re literally farming in our own shit. I mean, that’s so middle-aged. I bet he would laugh his ass off.”

Mark smiled at him, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He tried to look strong for Chris but it only made him seem all the more lonely.

“Did you even hear most of my plan?” Chris asked, trying to distract him from his thoughts.

“Yes I did, you want to blow us up with hydrazine.” Mark said teasingly. “Chris, I don’t want to die a virgin!”

“You’re not even a virgin.” Chris said disbelievingly.

Mark just waved his hands around muttering ‘details, details’ under his breath.

“Anyway, you won’t even be getting close to the catalyst. I’m the one who came up with the plan, I’ll do the burning.”

“You know,” Mark said, “If the explosion breaches the Hab it won’t really matter where I stand as I implode.”

“Just do this for me, please. It’ll make me feel better. Besides, this will be dangerous and I don’t need you there to distract me.”

“All right Dr. Bossy Beck.”

“Please stop calling me that.”

They made their way to the MAV, or at least, what had stayed behind, and got all the hydrazine out successfully. Afterwards they both hauled it all on the back of the rover and began to ride back to the Hab.

“You know” Chris said suddenly, while turning down the volume so that ‘Night Fever’ could now only be heard as background music. “We can do some of the experiments NASA had planned for us to do. I was really looking forward to most of them.”

Mark looked at him. “Well, we can still do them all, I suppose. We could start some long-term projects. It’ll keep us busy. What would you start with?”

“I was going experiment a bit with chemolithotrophics, you know, trying to see if I could get the tardigrade to conserve energy using anaerobic respiration in a Martian Landscape.”

“You know, Chris, I do not understand chemolithotrophics at all.”

“Oh well, it’s basically the study of prokaryotes who derive their energy from the oxidation of reduced inorganic compounds.”

“All right, that made at least a little bit more sense, but still. I think I’ll just stick with my plants. They’re much prettier than your prokaryotes anyway. By the way, I’ve wanted to ask: how are we going to start the fire for the catalyst anyway? As far as I know everything NASA sent up with us is flame deterrent.”

“Well, everything except for Martinez his personal items. He took a wooden cross with him; NASA cleared it under special circumstances.” Chris replied, and he felt a pang of guilt. They were planning to violate something that had a lot of sentimental value to one of their best friends. Of course it wasn’t as valuable as their life, far from it, but it still made Chris feel guilty about it.

“Well, if he didn’t want us to use it he shouldn’t have left us for dead on a desolate planet.” Mark said, trying and failing to make Chris feel a little better.  
“I don’t think he would have minded though.”

This seemed to make Chris feel a little better at least. They headed back inside and started to set the catalyst up in the middle of their farm. After making sure everything was ready Chris ushered Mark away, saying that he would be fine, to which mark replied rather sarcastically that of course everything would be fine, because nothing bad has ever happened form lightning hydrazine on fire.

Mark was still grumbling while he stood as far away as he could from Chris and simultaneously holding him in his sight.

Chris carefully lighted the pieces of wood up with the wires before placing it in the catalyst. Mark had just enough time to yell enthusiastically and watch as Chris does the same thing when the catalyst started working. They made eye contact and Chris smiled that stupidly handsome smile that always made Marks day.

And at that moment the catalyst exploded.


	10. Chapter 8

‘This cannot be happening.’ Mark thought as he watched in horror as Chris was thrown backwards by the force of the explosion. He felt detached, like he was floating around somewhere in the room and he couldn’t control his own body.

And then suddenly everything became too loud, too bright, and too painful.

‘This is not happening.’ He thought again.

He began to run to Chris’ side and started to check frantically for visible injuries. He wasn’t conscious, and he wasn’t reacting to Mark shaking him by his shoulders, trying to wake him up.

Mark took his wrist in his hands and tried to ignore the fact that his hands were shaking. He felt something wet on his face and wiped it away with one of his hands. He hadn’t even realized he was crying. He took Chris’s wrist in one hand and started to feel for a pulse. He held his breath for a moment and then he felt it. 

Mark started to sob with relief, he had thought...

“Chris, please wake up. Oh god, please. Don’t leave me, don’t you dare leave me alone here. Come on, wake up!” Mark said, all the while holding Chris's hand in his.

Chris groaned, and started moving around a bit. He opened his eyes only to close them again with a hiss.

“Hey mark” He said softly after a while as he tried to adjust to the light. “You ok?”

Suddenly laughter bubbled up from within Mark. He didn’t think he’d ever felt more happy hearing Chris's voice.

“I’m not the one who got blown up. Jesus, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Mark put one arm around Chris and helped him in a sitting position, with his back against the wall.

“Do I need to get you anything?” he asked worriedly.

“Just give me a moment.” Chris sighed as he closed his eyes again. Mark stayed next to him, all the while keeping his hand on Chris’s shoulder.

He noticed Chris was still shaking, and he seemed pretty out of it. He also had some light burns on his face, nothing permanent; but they were probably going to hurt for a while.

“Stay here.” He said quietly while he went to fetch a blanket, a bottle of water and some medicine.

After he came back he put the blanket around Chris's shoulders, who nodded gratefully at him. Then he gave him a painkiller ad a sleeping pill and helped him swallow it down with some water. He also put some salve on the burn wounds gingerly, trying not to aggravate his wounds.

“I’m the doctor, you know.” Chris said while smiling weakly at him. He was already drooping of. Good.

“You’re an idiot.” Mark said, but he was smiling while he said it. After a while Chris fell asleep against Mark, and after some maneuvering Mark managed to tilt him up. He made his way slowly back to their room and put Chris down on his bed.

The burns weren’t that bad. Most of them were first degrees, and only a small burn on his left cheek was second degree.

Mark sighed as he sat down on the floor next to his bed after making sure Chris was at least covered with a blanket. He curled up in himself a bit and thought about what had almost happened.

If the explosion was a bit more powerful, if Chris had been even a little bit closer to it.

Why hadn’t he insisted on checking Chris's notes? What had even gone wrong? Why had he allowed Chris to go through with this stupid thick-headed plan? He was supposed to protect Chris, to keep him safe. Chris was supposed to survive. They weren’t even alone for a month and Chris was already hurt because of him.

Maybe if he had insisted…

Mark snorted.

There was no way in hell Chris would have let him start up the catalyst. He was way to bossy for that.

He stayed there for a long while, waiting for Chris to wake up. After a while he started to read through a bit of the tests that NASA had given everyone, only to get distracted after every couple of sentences and checking up on Chris again. There were some interesting geological tests that they could do later, Chris would undoubtedly like that.

Mark looked back up at Chris, who was still sleeping peacefully. He would probably want to remake the catalyst and try again as soon as he woke up, not that Mark was going to let him.

Mark went to get Chris’s notes on the catalyst before settling in next to him again and tried to see where things had gone wrong.

After a while he found the mistake Chris had made. Hmm… it seemed Chris had forgotten to account for the excessive oxygen that he had been exhaling. 14-16% of the air that we exhale is made of oxygen, which would have been enough of an imbalance to make the catalyst explode.

Mark sighed. It was such a stupid mistake. He felt even worse because he hadn’t thought about it either, and now Chris was hurt.

Mark slowly got up and walked back to the rec room. There wasn’t any fire anymore –and god, he was such an idiot. There’s a fire in the Hab and he doesn’t even check if it’s still going before walking away. Well done, Watney! - But the catalyst was completely ruined. They were going to have to make a new one.

Mark decided to get to work now while Chris was still sleeping. He might even get the catalyst to work by the time Chris woke up, which would be one of the best wake-up presents he’d get on this planet.

He went to put on a protective suit, and started to build another catalyst. It wasn’t as much work as he had thought, seeing as he still had the schematics from the first one that he could use.

After adjusting the final bits on the catalyst Mark slowly made another fire using the little pieces of wood that they had, and gently placed it in the catalyst.

The fire started up, and suddenly there was steam coming from the catalyst.

It was working! Mark felt giddy as he looked around, this was fantastic news, and their potato plants were going to get enough water to grow now!

He turned around to look at all their work and suddenly he saw Chris standing in the doorway, looking at him with bleary eyes like he had never seen him before and a blanket still wrapped around him.

“Chris?” Mark asked softly, right before Chris quickly made his way towards him, pulled Marks body close to his and suddenly Mark felt Chris’ lips on his.

The kiss was surprisingly soft, almost chaste. Whenever Mark had imagined kissing Chris, it was always with this desperate hunger and need for each other. He had always thought that Chris, being his usual bossy self, would try to dominate the kiss, that it would be too much hands and too little time.

This kiss wasn't anything like he had imagined, like he could have imagined, it was so much better than that. Chris was taking his time, showing Mark that they had enough time, together; it made Mark smile a bit in the kiss before he started to deepen it enthusiastically. He slowly licked Chris' lips as if asking for entrance, and as soon as Chris opened his lips he started to explore. 

There wasn't a fight for dominance; Chris just let Mark have all of it. He offered himself completely for Mark and it made Mark almost sway on his feet. Mark quickly tightened his arms around Chris, and he put one arm in Chris' hair and pulled at it softly. This made Chris moan into the kiss which, in turn, only made Mark all the more enthusiastic during the kiss.

After a while they slowly pulled apart, breathing heavily. Mark looked at Chris, with his hair and clothes ruffled, and the blanket that had fallen to the floor during their fantastic making-out session.

"Hey there, handsome." Mark said softly as he beamed at Chris.


	11. chapter 9

When Chris woke up, he was surprised to find himself tucked into Mark's bed, with a glass of water standing on the ground next to him while the papers that detailed all the guidelines for their experiments on Mars and his calculations for the catalyst were lying carelessly around the bed.

Chris groaned as he tried to get used to the light, which would have been a lot easier if his head wasn’t pounding. He sat up feeling a bit dazed while he looked around as he started to take notice of his injuries. He had some burns, but it seemed Mark had already bandaged them.

He touched the back of his head where he felt a slight lump.

Judging by the lump, the head ache and the dizziness he was feeling right now, he was probably suffering from a slight concussion.

Still, he wasn’t so bad off considering he had almost blown himself up. He wondered why that had happened though.

Chris felt his face heat up as he thought back to the explosion. Damnit... what had he missed? He had rechecked his calculations more than once; there shouldn’t have been a mistake.

He also remembers falling asleep in the rec room, which means Mark had probably carried him back, and then proceeded to tuck him in.

Chris grunted as he picked up the papers from the catalyst that were lying next to the bed. There were some calculations from Mark written on it, which didn’t make sense unless he had already worked the problem out while Chris was unconscious.

He read through Marks calculations and immediately felt like face palming.

He’s an idiot.

If anyone should have thought about excessive exhaling it should have been him. The human body only uses a fourth of the oxygen it inhales on average, so there would have been enough oxygen to throw of the balance that the catalyst needed.

He looked around him, if Mark wasn’t with him than he was probably already making the catalyst.

Chris sat on the side of Marks bed, and pulled the blanket around him when he shivered. He should probably go to Mark and let him know that he was awake, and check up on the catalyst while he was there.

He stayed on the bed however, thinking about how Mark had taken care of him. It made him feel... safe, he guessed. Protected, even. He also remembered Mark pleading with him to wake up, begging not to leave him. And the look in his eyes when Chris woke up properly… was more the look of a lover than that of a friend.

Chris thought about that. Could it be that he had feelings for Mark? And if so, was it reciprocated?

There weren’t really words for him to describe what Mark meant to him. They’d always had this flirty demeanor with each other, and they got along better than with the others from the crew.

Don’t get him wrong, Chris loved his little make-shift family, but what he and Mark had was something else.

Chris thought about how he always felt better when Mark was around, about all the excuses to sit next to each other during crew meetings, all the accidental touches…

Well, he guessed they weren’t really accidental after all.

But what surprised Chris was that he didn’t mind those, quite the opposite, he found himself looking forwards to them.

He was happier when Mark was around, Mark made him smile more, he cared about him, and when Chris thought back on how he felt when he thought Mark had died on sol 18…

Oh God.

He was in love with Mark Watney

What was he going to do?

There’s a reason that NASA has their ‘no fraternization’ rule going on, and it wasn’t because they were worried about space babies.

If he started something with Mark now, and they decided to break up after a while, than that would only give them added stress and heartache on top of the high-stress situations they found themselves in every day.

He realized that he had a choice here: he could pretend that nothing was going on between Watney and him; or he could go for it and hope that things don’t go south.

He couldn’t let his feelings distract them from their mission.

There was a reason that Lewis had kept going on and on about the no fraternization rule from NASA. Thinking back on it, a lot of that was probably because of Mark and him. But that was far from being the only reason: being in space was dangerous, and if you add personal problems to a high stress environment…

Chris had seen it happening enough during his work at the hospital. It’s the same reason why doctors can’t operate on family. People who are under a lot of stress are more likely to make mistakes, and in his profession (both astronaut and doctor) mistakes can lead to death in the worst-case scenario.

Chris decided he was not going to endanger his own life, and he definitely wasn’t going to endanger Mark’s life. He’d just grit his teeth and bear through it.

He slowly made his way towards the rec room, and he arrived just in time to see the catalyst starting to work, and Mark looking at it like Christmas had come early.

It was a beautiful.

Chris felt his heart hammering in his chest. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to ignore the fact that he was falling in love with Mark.

And then Mark turned around and looked at him.

Really, how was Chris supposed to ignore his feelings and hope that they go away when Mark turned around and started looking at him like he was his entire world? The way he saw that Mark was looking at him, speaking to him in that soft voice… now that he had noticed it he couldn’t stop noticing all the signs.

And suddenly all those reasons why this was such a bad idea didn’t seem to face Chris anymore. The simply didn’t matter to him as long as he was going to be able to hold Mark in his arms.

And he wanted to be close to Mark, to feel their bodies pressed against each other, so he just went with how he felt for once.

Chris had always had a good set of instincts, and right now it was screaming at him to sweep Mark of his feet like in some kind of stupid romantic movie and kiss the hell out of him.

He was still a bit shaky from the explosion though, but he could definitely get that second part down. He went to Mark’s side, and before Mark could say something else to him he tilted his head up and kissed him soundly on the lips. He had tried to keep it sweet and light, but when Mark started to deepen the kiss he couldn’t stop himself from basically plundering his mouth, not that Mark seemed to mind though.

Looking at the way Mark was groaning Chris would say he rather liked it too.

After a while they both broke apart to get some air, and Chris heard Mark greeting him.

‘Wow, nice control Beck!’ He thought to himself ‘You lasted 5 minutes in not telling or showing Mark how you feel. Great work.’

But he couldn’t even bring himself to be bothered by it when Mark was still holding him and distracting him by being so close to him. It was intoxicating, the way Mark made him feel.

And then the moment was effectively ruined by Chris starting to sway on his feet.

“Are you all right?” Mark asked worriedly, while he tightened the arm that was still around Chris. “Or was I that good that I just swayed you off your feet?” he added, and threw in a crooked smile for good measure.

“I’m fine. It’s just a slight concussion. A bit of rest, and it should be all cleared up in a couple of days.”

“Oh… Is that why you kissed me?” Mark asked with a teasing voice. He smiled at Chris, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Chris looked up at him sharply. He’d seen Mark looking like that before, when he was trying his best not to show that something bothered him.

“Mark, don’t be an idiot. I might have a small concussion, but I still know what I’m doing.” Bingo. Mark didn’t exactly loose the stiff posture, but the relieve in his eyes was overwhelming.

“Yeah, sorry, I just thought…”

“That’s all right; I only just realized… well, I thought kissing you would make my intentions clear enough.”

Suddenly Mark started to snigger.

“Can you imagine what Lewis is going to say when she finds out? She’s been harassing everyone with that rule of hers, and she isn’t even gone for a month before we break it.”

Chris smiled up at him. “Maybe we should bring her a Martian rock, you know, as a peace offering.”

“What about Beth though?”

Chris looked confused up at Mark. “Why would Beth need a peace offering?”

Mark looked around uncomfortably, and started to shift from one foot to the other.  Then he got a determined look in his eyes, looked at Chris and answered him.

“Not that, I thought you had feelings for Beth.” 

“Beth? What on earth gave you that idea?”

“On Mars” said Mark with a quick smile “And you two did. You always look at her in a certain way, and I just thought that you two would be good for each other.”

“Hey Mark” Chris said, “Are you sure you want this? First the concussion and now Beth, it feels like you’re searching for excuses now.”

“It’s not that, it’s just… I’ve been crazy about you for so long, and then suddenly out of nowhere you walk in and start making out with me? I’m half convinced I’m still lying outside, and that I’m hallucinating all of this.”

Mark looked so lost in that moment, so Chris did the only sensible thing he could think of. He laid his hand on Marks cheek and guided Mark’s lips to his.

This kiss was much shorter, but no less sweeter. Chris laid his head on Mark’s shoulder when they broke apart.

“What are we going to do?” Chris asked.

“Well,” Mark said, trailing off, “We could play doctor?”

 “Mark, I’m serious.”

“Wait, as in, the star Sirius? You’re a star? I mean, I knew you were hot but…”

“Mark! I meant this thing between us, whatever this is.”

“I was talking about that, I could totally be a naughty nurse.”

Chris glared at Mark, who simply grinned widely back at him.

“Not now, we still have work to do.” And with that Chris walked back towards the kitchen to heat up two of their hydratable meals.

“See, you’re already getting into your role of Dr. Bossy Beck.” Mark said, while he started to follow Chris to the kitchen. When they left the rec room, the catalyst was already busy making enough water so that the humidity would rise in the room; creating the perfect environment for the potato plants to grow.

After a while Chris and Mark grew increasable close in each other’s company. Now that the potatoes were planted, they had extra time on their hands while they waited for the plants to grow.

They kept themselves busy by making the Hab livable enough for long-term stay, repairing their EVA suits, cleaning the solar panels after a minor storm and their experiments.

Mark couldn’t start his experiments, because he would have needed the soil from earth for the most part, so now he had started to take over Lewis's experiments.

On the morning of sol 54 Mark woke up while holding Chris as usual. They had started sleeping in the same bed after their first kiss. Mark had suggested Chris needed a lot of rest, and that he was willing to be a human pillow in the name of science. Chris had just smiled at him, pulled him close, and immediately started snoozing on his shoulder.

He got out of bed, went to make some coffee, and walked towards their potato farm to check on the plants.

Oh god, they already had a routine. They were like every other old married couple, except for living on Mars at the moment, of course.

Mark walked into the rec room, only to stop suddenly when he saw the little green leaf sticking out of the dirt. He slowly walked towards it, and kneeled next to the tiny plant.

“Hey there” he said, while reverently touching the leaf.

He couldn’t believe they’d actually done it. They had made something grow on a desolate planet. He hadn’t had a clue about how deep this was going to touch him, how this was going to truly move him, until it was happening. Mark quickly ran back towards their sleeping quarters to wake Chris up.

After showing Chris the plant and almost waxing poetry about it in his enthusiasm, they settled down during their breakfast while they talked about the next obstacle that they were going to have to deal with.

Now that they had food, how where they going to make contact with NASA?


	12. interlude pt. 2

**HAB, ARES III: OFFICIAL LOG SYSTEM**

**Entry made by: Dr. Chris Beck, Log Sol 57**

Chris sighed as he looked at the camera, ran a hand through his hair, and started to record his log of the day.

“This is astronaut Chris Beck, reporting on sol 57, at 07.18 AM. I don’t have anything new to report since yesterday, a routine check of the Hab showed us normal results, we recounted the food and we’re still on schedule on that aspect, the plants- Oh, come on, Mark!”

In the background of the log recordings Mark was suddenly visible and obviously walking around naked. When Mark heard his name he turned around, only for Chris to quickly cover a part of the camera with some paper that was lying around so that Mark wouldn’t be seen completely naked from the front on the camera.

“What?” He asked grumpily, while rubbing in his eyes sleepily with his palm.

Chris turned around to glare at Mark, which made a large hickey on the side of his neck visible.

“Mark, put some clothes on, I’m filming a log.”

Mark huffed, put his hands on his hips and looked back at Chris without an ounce of shame.

“Why should that stop me? I mean, it’s not like we’re going to fuck right now or something.”

Chris looked back at the camera that was still recording everything in frustration before turning back to Mark and speaking to him in a low voice, still audible on the camera:

“You do realize that NASA will probably watch these logs someday and  _the entire world_  could see them?”

Mark looked like he was going to retort, before closing his mouth again and walking closer to the camera until he was next to Chris’s side. He leaned forward until his face was right in front of the camera before speaking.

“Well, then ‘the entire world’ can know that Dr. Chris Beck is a buzzkill.”

And with that Mark walked away, swinging his hips as he went. Chris turned back to the logs and started talking again.

“I’m so sorry. He’s been like that ever since I told him...uh...”

_“Mark, stop."_

_Those two words were all Mark needed to hear in order to immediately let go of Chris. They were currently lying on Mark’s bed, and were busy with a heavy make-out session that was quickly turning into something more._

_Most of their clothes were lying around their bedroom, and Mark had just been about to take of Chris’s boxers when Chris moved a hand to stop him. Sure, they hadn’t exactly talked about taking it a step further, but by the way Chris had been jumping him earlier he had thought he was pretty much into this._

_“What? Why should we stop? Do you want to stop?”_

_Chris sat up, and took Mark’s hand in his. He started to rub it with his thumb soothingly, and Mark thought he probably didn’t even realize he was doing it._

_“We should think about this first. Do you even know how many calories this will consume?”_

_At this, Mark looked up at Chris with a deadpan expression. He raised a single eyebrow at Chris when he saw that he was just looking seriously back at him._

_“I’m sorry, but are you kidding me?” He asked, without any real heat in his voice. He was still just staring at Chris like he might come from another planet._

_“No, I’m not. Look, on average you will burn about 300 calories/hour if you have sex. This might not seem like much, but it’ll add up quickly after 4 years. We’re already scrambling for enough calories to survive here, and it’s not necessary to our survival.”_

_“Oh My god,” Mark moaned, “You know, I like this nerdy side of you, really, I do! But right now it’s kind of pissing me of.”_

_Mark saw that Chris was still looking at him uncertainly, so he decided he needed a different tactic._

_“Come on, Chris! We could be the first people to have sex on mars. On mars!” Suddenly Mark leaned forward and leaned in close so that he could whisper in Chris’s ear: “What do you think it would be like, with gravitational levels of only 0.4g? I bet I could hold you against a wall easily and-“_

_“MARK!”_

_“Ok, ok, I get it. Just so you know, you are literally being the biggest cockblocker on this planet.”_

_“Hey, I didn’t say we should never have sex. I just meant we shouldn’t have too much of it. But I really want to be with you Mark, you have to know that.”_

_“I know” Mark said as he stared dejected at Chris, and Chris really hated to see Mark look so sad._

_“I’ll tell you what, when we get back on earth we’ll do whatever you want, however you want it, and whenever you want it. In the meantime-" and here Chris trailed of before grabbing a hand full of Mark's ass, "What where you saying about 0.4G?"_

“But on the other hand…” Chris trailed off awkwardly. The blush on his cheeks deepened as he stared of into space for a while, while his mouth had gone slack. He looked back at the camera and decided to finish this log a little sooner than normal.

“Mark has been  _very_  motivated to get back to earth.”


	13. Chapter 10

Meanwhile on earth Teddy Sanders, director of NASA, had just gotten back to his office after the official burial ceremony for astronauts Chris Beck and Mark Watney. He took of his jacket and threw it over the hangar that was standing on the side of his office. After putting on the television he saw that the news channel was doing a report on Beck and Watney’s deaths. They were alternating between showing videos from on the Hermes when Beck and Watney were still alive, and the burial of the empty coffins at the graveyard while Teddy gave his speech.

He watched with a sorrowful look while he thought of all the ‘what if’s’ that could have prevented such a disaster from happening. It was the first time a crew from the Ares-missions had to perform an Evac, and they had lost 2 astronauts during it.

At that moment Teddy heard the door to his office opening. He didn’t turn around to look who had entered, there were only a number of people who would walk in without bothering to knock or wait for him to let them in, and only one of those people would come now…

“I thought you gave a lovely speech by the way.”

Teddy turned around to see Venkat Kapoor, director of Mars Missions with NASA, standing in his doorway; raincoat still in his hand. Venkat had already sent in a couple of requests for satellite time, and each time Teddy had denied him. It was only a matter of time before Venkat would have decided to come and see Teddy for himself.

Teddy put out the television, and the room was once moor engulfed in silence. He turned around to stare at Venkat and waited for him to start explaining why he was in his office.

“I need you to authorize my satellite time.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

Teddy walked back to his chair so he could sit behind his desk, while he saw that Venkat was starting to look mad at him. Good. He wasn’t going to authorize satellite time with 2 astronauts lying dead on Mars in the middle of a crater.

“We’re funded for 5 Ares missions; I think I can even get congress to authorize a sixth right now. Ares III evacuated after 18 sols, there’s still at least half a mission’s worth of supplies up there. I can sell it at the fraction of the cost of a normal mission, and all I have to know for that is what’s left of our assets.”

“You’re not the only one who needs satellite time, we got the Ares IV supply mission coming up, and we should be focusing on the Schiaparelli crater.”

“Okay, we got 12 satellites up there, surely we can spare a few hours to-“

“It’s not about the satellite time, Vence!” Teddy yelled, while he looked at Venkat sharply. “We’re a public domain organization; we need to be transparent on this.” He sighed as he rubbed with his fingers against his temple.

What a mess.

“Okay” Venkat said, but Teddy wasn’t done yet.

“The second we point the satellites at the Hab, I broadcast pictures of Mark Watney and Chris Beck their dead bodies to the world. I bet their friends and families would just love that.”

He had already received different mails from people who knew both Watney and Beck, and had worked together with them as colleagues over the years. It was heartbreaking, and most of the letters blamed him for snatching them away from their previous workplaces and letting them die in space. Every year NASA would look for the best people to join their mission, and convince them to go to Mars. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, so most people didn’t need that much convincing.

It had been the same with Beck and Watney. Watney was all but jumping up and down from joy when he was selected for the Ares III program, and it hadn’t taken that long to convince Beck as well to join their crew. Even though it was ultimately their decision, the university and the John Hopkins hospital still blamed Teddy for their deaths, seeing as the selected people should have been given his personal approval before getting into the ARES-program.

Showing their bodies on the news was only going to make everything worse. He just had to make Venkat see this from his point of view.

“You’re afraid of a PR-problem.”

“Of course I’m afraid of a PR-problem. Another mission, Vence? Congress won’t reimburse us for a paperclip if I put two dead astronauts on the front page of the Washington post. Can you even imagine how the public is going to react to that?”

Venkat sighed as he went to sit on the other side of the desk. He knew that the situation was very delicate. A lot of people knew Beck and Watney personally around NASA. It was hard not to, they were both very social people, and the entire crew had insisted on talking to everyone who was going to assist them during the mission. This made their loss all the more personal, and because of that painful, for people at the Johnson Space Center.

“They’re not going anywhere Teddy. I mean, they’re not… they’re not going to decompose. According to Commander Lewis the two of them where hit by a piece of debris from the storm. They’re still lying on the surface somewhere; they’re going to be up there forever.”

“Meteorology estimates that they’ll be covered in sand from normal weather activity within a year.”

“Well, we can’t wait a year; we’ve got work to do.”

“Ares V won’t even launch for another 5 years, we’ve got plenty of time.”

“Okay, okay… consider this: right now, the world is on our side. Sympathy for Beck and Watney their families. Ares VI can bring their bodies’ home. Now, we don’t say that that’s the purpose of the mission, but we make it clear that that’s a part of it, we frame it that way; more support from congress, but not if we wait a year.” Venkat looked Teddy back in the eye then, his face was completely serious.

“We wait a year, and nobody gives a shit about them anymore.”


	14. Chapter 11

It was 01.30 am at mission control in the Johnson space center, and Mindy Park was looking forward to the end of her shift. She had this shift until 03.00 am, when her station would be taken over by Ross Paterson. Not that she hated working here, quite the opposite actually, but she has had a couple of sleepless nights in a row because she had to babysit her little nephew, and the hours were getting to her.

Mindy had gotten up a couple of minutes ago so that she could prepare some instant noodles and coffee as a late-night snack and had sat back down just in time to receive a message from Venkat Kapoor.

“Venkat Kapoor…” she murmured to herself, while opening the message. Naturally she had heard of Kapoor, he was the director of Mars Missions, and Mindy was in charge of the satellite communications with Mars, so they have sent a lot of mail back and forth between the two of them. But with the Ares III crew already on the Hermes back to earth, and the Ares IV crew still on earth, there weren’t a lot of tasks for her at the time. She opened the mail and started to read it.

‘Hi Mindy.

Check these coordinates:

LAT: 48°42'0"

LON: 22°0'0"

(46.7°,-22°)

Venkat.’

Mindy pushed up her glasses and put her coffee aside before putting in the coordinates and watching the screen in front of her as it started to zoom in on the correct place. She looked up at the head screen just in time to see a picture of Acidalia Planitia to appear at sol 54.

Something was wrong with the picture. Mindy looked back at the side of the screen to check on the readings again, thinking that maybe she had put the wrong numbers in the program.

RSVS: +58

ACCUM: 2616

HXIN: +59

All the readings were normal.

“What?” she said to herself softly as she pulled up an image from sol 18, so that she could compare it with the image from sol 54. She stared at it horrified before quickly grabbing her phone and grabbing the number in case of emergencies that was always lying next to her desk. In her haste she dialed the number wrong, and had to start over again. She lifted the phone to her ear with shaking hands and continued to stare at the two pictures that were side by side on her computer screen.

“Hello, security, this is Mindy Park in sitcom. I need the emergency contacts for Venkat Kapoor.”

“I’m sorry, did you say Venkat Kapoor?”

“Yes, him!”

“Ma’am it’s almost 01.30, are you sure it’s an emergency?”

“Yes, it’s an emergency!”

By the time an hour had passed Venkat Kapoor, Teddy Sanders and Annie Montrose, who was the director of media relations, had joined her at mission control.

“How sure are you?” Teddy asked, while he looked at the head screen where the satellite picture of sol 54 was displayed.

“100%” Venkat said, while he sat himself on the desk next to Mindy’s. He took of his glasses slowly to clean them, and then he put them on and looked at the picture again, hoping that it would have changed since the last couple of times he stared at it in disbelief. It didn’t.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Annie Montrose said as she watched the image in disbelief. She was already planning several options she could go with if Watney and Beck really were alive. This was going to become huge.

“Prove it to me.” Teddy said, and gave Venkat a sign to get on with it.

“For a start the solar panels have been cleaned.”

“It could have been cleaned by wind.”

 “Back it up.” Venkat said to Mindy, while he pointed back at the head screen to show Teddy what else they had found. “Look at Rover 2. According to the logs, Commander Lewis took it out on sol 17, and plugged it into the Hab to recharge. It’s been moved.”

“She could have forgotten to log the move.” Teddy said uncomfortably. He looked back at the screen. Commander Lewis wasn’t the type to easily forget to log something as important as the place of a rover into the log system.

“No, not likely.” Mindy interjected. She had been staring at the two pictures the entire time while she waited for the director’s to get to the center, and the longer she stared at it, the more convinced she became.

“There are also a lot of boxes lying next to the Hab in a heap. Are you going to suggest that they left the door of the Hab open and that the storm blew these boxes all out into a stacked heap?”

“Well, why don’t we just ask Lewis? Let’s get her on Capcom and ask her directly right now” said Annie.

“No!” Teddy said quickly, before Annie could get any ideas, “If Watney and Beck are really alive, we don’t want the Ares III crew to know.”

“We don’t even know if they’re both alive.” Venkat said. “They were both hit by debris. We should remember that it’s more likely that only one of them survived the storm. For all we know only Watney or only Beck is alive, and one of them is stuck alone out there with the dead body of a fellow astronaut.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the mission control room then. It was only broken after a while when Annie started to speak again.

“But we know that at least one of them is alive. We should tell the crew about this, they deserve to know.”

“I said no! They have another ten months on a trip home. Space travel is dangerous; they need to be alert and undistracted.”

“But they already think Beck and Watney are dead!”

“And they’d be devastated to find out they left the both of them behind alive.” Venkat interjected, before they could start a fight about this.

“I’m sorry, but have the both of you not thought this through? I mean, what are we going to say?

‘Dear America,

Remember those two astronauts that we got killed and had a really nice funeral for?

Turns out at least one of them is alive and we left them behind on Mars, our bad.

Sincerely,

I mean, do you even realize the shit storm that’s about to hit us?”

“How are we going to handle the public?” Teddy asked her after she stopped talking.

“Legally we have 24 hours to release the pictures.”

“We will release a statement; we don’t want people working it out on their own. _Do not_  emphasize on the fact that one of them might be dead. We will assume that they’re both alive until we have evidence that suggest otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But if my math is right, they’re going to starve to death long before we can help them; especially if they both survived.”

Venkat looked back at the other people in the mission control room. “Can you imagine what they’re going through up there? I mean, they’re fifty million miles away from home, they only have each other, they think we totally gave up on them. I mean what does that even do to a man, psychologically? What the hell are they even thinking right now?”


	15. chapter 12

“Hey Chris, you have a PhD for biology, right? What do you think would happen if you put a fish in sparkling water?”

Chris stared blankly back at Mark who was lying on his bed with his computer on his lap, making a cost-benefit analysis regarding their farm and occasionally going through Lewis’s playlist.

“Why? Weren't you working on something for the farm? Wait, are you planning on putting a fish in sparkling water?”

“I can do more than one thing at a time. I was just wondering about it, and now I won’t stop thinking about what would happen. I specialized in plants, not in animals; so I don’t know what’ll happen.”

“It’ll die.”

Mark rolled his eyes at that. “Believe it or not, I actually figured that one out by myself. I was just wondering why?”

“Well, most fish need an environment where the pH is 6.8 or higher, and water for example is normally somewhere around 7.5. A bottle of sparkling water usually has a pH level that’s between 3 and 4, so the fish probably wouldn’t survive. The only way that the fish can survive would if it adapted itself to the environment it’ll live in. Otherwise they would just suffocate on the carbonated water and die, I guess.”

“Oh.” Mark stopped scrolling through the playlist, put on a slow dancing song, and made his way towards Chris. He tapped him on the shoulder, and he held his hand out when Chris turned away from the experiments he was currently revising.

“Would you do me the honor, Dr. Beck?” he asked with a grin.

“It would be my pleasure, Mr. Watney.” Chris said, as he took the offered hand and put his other hand on Mark’s waist. Mark laid his head on Chris’s shoulder, and they started to dance around slowly in their sleeping quarters.

“So, I was thinking…”

“What is it, Mark?” Chris asked. Mark’s warm breath against his collarbone was distracting him, and one of his hands had been slowly creeping lower since they started to dance which made it hard to concentrate.

“It’s sol 69 now, I was thinking we should celebrate that. It's a special date, after all.” Chris could feel Mark smirking against his skin when he said that.

“Is that why you chose the song ‘How deep is your love’, or is that just a coincidence?”

"That was a coincidence, what kind of man do you think I am? If I wanted to get you into my bed with disco music, i would have picked a song that is less obvious. " Mark said, feigning shock. He began to lead Chris closer to the bed, and when the song was over Chris pushed Mark on the bed, and placed himself above Mark.

"Well, I don't really mind the context of the title at the moment, and why not go with what it says?" Chris said, while slowly lifting Mark's T-Shirt higher.

* * *

 

" I Think it's time we start thinking long-term."

Chris looked up from his portion of their breakfast at Mark who was sitting in front of him, happily munching on his part of the breakfast eggs in front of him.

"Are you talking about our relationship?"

"What? No, I meant about getting back to earth." Mark said, wiping his hands on his pants and standing up so he could deposit his plate on their kitchen counter. "I've looked at the distance between here and the Schiaparelli crater. It's a journey from about 3200 km, if everything goes to plan. In four years, when the next Ares crew arrives, we'll have to be there. Which means we'll have to get to the crater."

Chris pursed his lips in thought. "The only thing that we can use for transport is rover 2, and the rovers have a maximum distance of 35 km before we need to recharge the battery at the Hab." That was theoretical however, the rovers have never been tested for more than 30 km. This is because everything the crew could possibly need for their mission was going to be close to the Hab.

"That's the rub. So we're going to have to perform a lot of tests to see how far we can get with the rover in one go. I'll go dismantle the Rover 1 for parts that we could use, and you'll drive around with Rover 2, so that we can determine the maximum distance it'll go. Maybe we're lucky and rover 2 can handle more than 35 in one go."

"Sound like a plan to me." Chris said as he got up and followed Mark towards the airlock.

The both put on their spare EVA-suits, checked if their communication devices worked, and made their way outside. Chris made his way towards Rover 2, and watched as Mark jumped his way towards where the Rover 1 was lying. Yes, jumped. That was the thing about Mars, the gravitational pull wasn't as big as it was on earth, so astronauts could carry a lot more, jump higher, etc. On average they should be able to jump 2.5 times higher on Mars than on earth.

"Hey Chris, who is holding the Guinness record for jumping in the air? I'm going to break it!"

"I think it was someone from Spain, and that doesn't count on Mars."

"Okay Smarty-pants, you win. Get Rover 2 going, I'm going to take this one over here apart."

"All right" Chris said, as he climbed in Rover 2 and started it up. "Have fun!"

"You too, handsome."

At the end of the day they had gotten back inside after Mark had scavenged Rover 1 for all the parts that Rover 2 might possibly need, and Chris had driven around in Rover 2 for a couple of hours, and discovered that the limit it could go was 32.6 km. It wasn't so bad for them, but it still put a damper on their mood. If they used both of the batteries, they would be able to go 65.2 km, before having to get back to the Hab to recharge them.

"We could try to make the Rover lighter, throw some of the unnecessary stuff out of it." Mark suggested without much enthusiasm. Chris started to shake his head before he was even finished speaking.

"NASA hasn't filled it with useless weight that would be unnecessary for the Rover to function. It's already on a minimum weight, and we're definitely going to need the Rover intact if we're going to travel to the Schiaparelli crater."

"Maybe if we shut down the heather? It's consuming about half of our battery right now."

"No. Hypothermia will start to occur when a body's temperature is below 35° Celsius, you could get liver failure if your body is that cold for a long period of time, and the trip will take a long time. And I'd like to point out that we're on a planet where the average temperature is minus 60 degrees on a summer midday, so there's a reason we have a heather. If you turn it off, it'll get -100 degrees in the Rover very quickly."

"I know how the laws of thermodynamics work, thanks." Mark snapped.

"Well, this isn't a joke. Don't you have any other ideas? You can't possibly be serious about turning of the heather." Chris told him harshly.

"I don't know, okay? What else am I supposed to say? It's not like we have a spare fireplace lying around somewhere that we could use, but we need to find a way for the batteries to waste less energy because of the heating systems."

Chris had to consciously stop himself from going in on what Mark said when he saw Mark starting to pace and trying to hold in his anger as well. He was being unreasonable, and he knew it. They had both been under a lot of stress lately, and it was slowly building up inside them. They had started to get little fights about things here and there, about the best way to survive. Mark thought of injuries as inconveniences, as long as they stayed alive, while Chris wanted them to stay as healthy as possible. but that's not a reason to be pissed of at Mark, it isn't his fault.

"Mark, calm down. There's no reason to get upset about this."

"Of course there's a reason to get upset! I'm not going to let you freeze to death. God. I-" and then Mark stopped pacing.

"Mark?"

"We could use the RTG."

It was silent for a moment.

"You want to WHAT?" Chris looked at Mark and hoped to see his eyes twinkle, as they often did when he was joking around, but Mark was looking seriously back at him.

"I'm sorry, but are you insane? There is a reason we put a flag with a skull on top of it, and it isn't decorations!"

"Well, you got a better idea to stay warm?"

"But it's dangerous!"

"Yeah, I know." Mark sighed, "when it ruptures around humans: no more humans. I remember being told to 'not dig up the big box of plutonium, Mark' during my training, but it'll help us get to the Schiaparelli Crater much faster."

"You want to use the radioisotope thermo-electric generator, a decaying radioactive isotope that'll kill us instantly if it ruptures, as a heating system?"

"Yes. The journey should take us roughly 50 days with the Rover this way, and we won't be cold anymore. We won't make it without the RTG. I did the math, we will never get any distance done if the Rover wastes half of its energy to support the heating system."

"All right. but I'd like to point out that even the smallest fracture would cause a radiation leak, and would in return be almost immediately fatal for us. So, do we have a plan to make it any safer?"

"I was actually planning to wrap it up in foil and duct tape."

"You know you can't use duct tape for everything, right?"

"As an engineer, i can absolutely guarantee you that this comes in handy more than one might think."

Chris laughed at that, and got up so he could kiss Mark on his cheek and put an arm around Mark's waist.

"All right, we'll use the RTG, but we're putting a seat belt around it."

Mark laughed loudly at that, and maybe it was a bit forced because they both tried not to think about the fight that they just had, but at least they both tried to make the best of it. Chris thought back on all the tension that got between them every time they were in a dangerous situation, and tightened his hand around Mark.


	16. chapter 13

Venkat Kapoor walked back into the meeting room next to the media room after he was led from the stage by Annie. Everyone looked away from the screen where the ending of his interview was displayed moments before as he entered.

"Don't say bring them home alive, Venkat. It might be an empty promise." Teddy said, still looking at the screen that was in the middle of the room, displaying the ending of the live interview for everyone.

"You know what, these interviews are uneasy. Excuse me if I try to say something pro-active and positive."

Teddy sighed, used the remote to silence the TV and turned his chair around. "Annie?" He said, making eye contact with her.

"No more Venkat on TV, copy that." She answered his unspoken question, and wrote it down in her planner. The director took the file he had on Beck and Watney's extended stay on Mars and read through it again. "76 km, am i reading that right?"

Mindy looked around her from where she was sitting in the corner of the room. She was wearing some of her best clothes that she had picked out that morning, knowing she was going to be meeting with the higher-ups that day. "Are you talking to me?"

"I am."

"uh" she stood up and nervously held her papers in front of her. She did a quick scan of the room and saw everyone looking at her expectantly. "Yes, sir. They drove for two hours straight, did a short EVA and drove for another 2 hours. I think the EVA was to change the batteries of the Rover. We have been able to conclude that one of the rovers is damaged beyond repair thanks to the satellite images; so they probably took the battery from that Rover."

"Is there anything else that happened while they were driving around?" Teddy asked her.

"Every 41 hours there's a 17 minute gap, it's the way the orbits work, so it's possible we missed something."

"I want that gap down to 4 minutes, no more. I'm also giving you total authority over satellite trajectories and orbital adjustments. I also want a team constantly rotating on watch, looking for even the smallest sign that more than one of them survived. Make it happen."

"Okay" Mindy said shyly and sat back down again.

Teddy looked around at everyone in the room and addressed them all. "Let's assume that Mark and Chris aren't going to leave yet, but they know that the only way for them to survive is to go to the Schiaparelli crater in time to meet up with the Ares IV crew." He pushed on a couple of buttons on a panel and the screen suddenly displayed Bruce, the director of the jet propulsion laboratory.

"Bruce, what's the earliest we can get supplies to them?"

"Well, with the positions of Earth and Mars, it'll take 9 months. It'll also take us 6 months to build it in the first place."

"I'm giving you 3 months for it." Teddy said. He could hear everyone in the room across from Bruce muttering about it, and he saw Bruce looking at him in disbelief. "You're going to say 'That's impossible', and then I'm going to make a blinding speech about the capabilities of the JPL team, and then you're going to do the math in your head and say something like 'The overtime alone will be a nightmare.'"

Bruce looked back at him unsure and muttered: "The overtime alone will be a nightmare."

"Get started on it, I'll find you the money. If congress was willing to invest 500 billion dollars on the Ares program, than we'll be able to convince them to support getting 2 astronauts home who will be on Mars for a longer period that 31 days, and thus have a lot more scientific data for us. Besides, with all the media attention, i don't think they'll have a lot of choice."

"We need to tell the crew" The whole room turned to look at Mitch, who was seated next to Teddy and looking at the file in front of him.

Venkat turned towards him: "Mitch, we've discussed this."

"No, you've discussed this! I decide what's best for the crew, and they deserve to know."

"And once there's a real rescue plan we'll tell them, otherwise it's moot. Can you imagine telling them they left Beck and Watney behind alive, and that they'll probably die of starvation before anyone can do something? Bruce gets three months to get the pre-supply mission running, that's all that matters at the moment."

"We'll do our best." Bruce said, nodding seriously at the camera. Teddy turned back around to look at him. "Make sure you do. Mark and Chris will die if you don't."


	17. Chapter 14

It was sol 79 at the moment, and it had been 48 sols since Mark and Chris had planted the potatoes, so it was time to reap and resow. Mark knelt next to the first plant that they put in the ground and gently touched the leaves.

"Would you look at that, Chris. They grew even better than I expected. There are no insects, parasites, weeds, etc. to deal with and we created the perfect environment for them to grow up in." Mark turned to look at Chris. "We'll dig up all the potatoes. The smaller ones we'll reseed, and the larger ones can become our food supply."

"All right, let's get started!" Chris said and turned around to take a shovel from the stack of instruments that was lying to the side.

"What? No! We're not going to use a shovel on my plants, they are very delicate!" Mark took the shovel from Chris's hands and shoved another tool in his hands. "We're going to use trowels. It's smaller than the shovels we have with us, and it's more suitable to use in this kind of situation."

Mark motioned for Chris to sit down next to him and started to explain the best way to remove the plant without damaging the roots. He used the first plant to show Chris what he was supposed to do.

"See, you got to dig at a safe distance from the plant, and avoid tearing the roots in the process of getting them out. The best way to do this is to grab them by their leaves and stems together, and not by their stem alone; they're still to delicate, and pull them out."

"All right, I think I've got it."

"Great! You do that, and I'll take the larger potatoes from them and then replant the smaller ones."

Mark cut one of the potatoes from the roots of the first plants and held it up for Chris to see. "Would you look at that: all natural, organic, martian grown potatoes. Not a lot of people can say that!" He smirked at Chris. "Neil Armstrong has got nothing on us."

They started working in their little farm, and at the end of the day they had replanted all the potato plants and were now in possession of about 400 healthy potato plants.

They were planning on taking the next day of from their experiments and tests to watch 'happy days' and relax for a bit. It's been a while since they've done that, but now that they have more food things should be better.

That evening Mark was looking at the maps for their trip to the Schiaparelli their computer and started scrolling around for a bit. He was wearing one of Chris's hoodies and it was pretty comfortable. They also smelled like him which was an added bonus. He was just about to get up and go to the kitchen where Chris was making their dinner when he saw it.

Ares Vallis.

Ares Vallis was located at the end of one of the outflow channels that emptied into the Chryse Planitia, and it was where Pathfinder was located.

Mark pulled up the records from the last known location of Pathfinder and quickly typed them in.

19.13N

33.22 W

He waited while the computer was pulling up the images, and after a while they appeared in front of him. In the Ares Vallis, a little bit under 400 km from the Hab, was Pathfinder.

Mars Pathfinder was a little robot that had landed on Mars on the 4th of July in 1997.

"Chris! You should come here!" Mark yelled, before pulling up all the papers he had about Pathfinder, and an additional map so that he could calculate the best route from the Hab to Pathfinder.

"What is it?" Chris asked as he ran into the room. He quickly made his way towards where Mark was standing and started to look over the files as well.

"I have found a way to contact NASA! We should go to Ares Vallis and retrieve Pathfinder. We could use this as a test as well to see if the rover can travel for long distances! Pathfinder was working longer then they even expected it to do, and they thought it stopped working because of a battery failure, which i can fix without a problem."

"Mark, this is great! We could contact NASA, we could contact our family, our friends, the crew! This is amazing! We'll just have to put the solar panels on the roof and I'll be able to reload the batteries everyday!" Chris said smiling up at him. "This is great news." He said softly.

Mark was frowning at him though. Chris placed a hand on his arm but Mark just flinched back from his touch.

"Mark?" Chris asked hesitantly.

"No... no, no! You're not going to get Pathfinder!" Mark looked at him angrily.

"What? why not?"

"It would be a better idea for me to go and get it on my own. Pathfinder is important if we want to contact NASA, and if something needs to be fixed at the Ares Vallis I'll be the best guy to do it. Besides, this will be the first time someone will use the rover for a long time travel, and it'll be best if I'm in it in case something goes wrong. I could fix it in case things go south."

Chris felt his heart breaking at the idea of Mark being alone, stuck in a Rover that was falling apart around him, while he was sitting safely in the Hab, unaware of what was happening. He knew that it was going to be though to convince Mark to let him go, but it had to be done. He didn't want Mark to be in danger, he wanted him to stay at the Hab, to stay safe.

"What are you talking about? You should stay at the Hab! We can't leave the plants to fend for themselves, and you're the botanist!"

"You've got a PhD for biology as well, you'll be fine. I'll leave instructions for you, nothing could go wrong with the plants."

Mark stared stubbornly back at Chris and he knew that they were both thinking the same thing. They both knew that the journey to the Ares Vallis would be more dangerous than staying at the Hab, and they both wanted the other person to be in the safest situation. But admitting that would mean that they weren't basing their decision on the best solution for the both of them, and that they were letting themselves be influenced by their feelings.

If Chris admitted that he didn't want Mark to go because he was too scared to lose Mark, than Mark would be able to claim that Chris wasn't thinking straight and that he was letting his feelings cloud his judgement. It was harsh, but if that was the way that Mark would be able to ensure Chris's safety, than Chris knew that Mark was going to do it.Sometimes the man was way to stubborn for his own good.

If he wanted to convince Mark that he should be the one to go, than he'll have to win this discussion with logical arguments, and not involve any of their feelings.

"You and I both know that the plants are more important than Pathfinder so it's better that you stay here! Pathfinder has been exposed to the martian surface for more than 20 years, it won't be any more broken in the couple of weeks it'll take me to bring it back. And lastly: if something goes wrong with the rover, than that'll just mean that we won't be able to go to the Schiaparelli crater anyway. Besides, I'm more specialised in EVA's, so it would be in both of our best interest to send me to retrieve Pathfinder."

"But that's not fair! You shouldn't have to go. We both know that it's safer in the Hab. I need to know that you're safe, I wouldn't be able to deal with all of this otherwise." Mark said, gesturing around him. "you're keeping me sane, Chris. Please, please just do this one thing for me. Just once. Stay here."

"It's the logical decision, Watney." Chris said coolly. Mark looked at him like he had just slapped him, and Chris tried to keep his face as neutral as possible. He could feel his control starting to slip and he hoped that Mark was going to give this up soon.

"Chris?" He heard Marks voice wavering as he lowered himself in the chair in front of the computer and started to go through the files. "Could you go and check on the food? It should be ready by now." Chris said, and pretended that nothing had happened.

"Fine! Whatever, you can go and retrieve that stupid robot." Mark said, and then he stomped away. From the moment that the doors slid closed Chris lowered himself on the floor and put his head in his hands. He tried to keep as quiet as possible as he felt himself starting to sob. It wasn't fair. Mark was mad and hurt because of him, and all he wanted to do was protect him. Was that so wrong?

What if they were still fighting by the time he leaves? What if this was the last time that they could talk to each other, and Chris fucked it up because he was trying to ensure Mark's safety? He knew that Mark would die as well if he died on his way to Ares Vallis, because he wouldn't have a Rover to travel to the Ares 4 landing crater, and he wouldn't have a way to contact NASA. But the thought of Mark, being alone on his way towards Pathfinder, and dying some horrible death... Chris shuddered.

He would make it back home, because there was just no other option. It's funny, how he was starting to think of the Hab as his home. It wasn't just his home, though, was it? It was also Mark's home. They had a home together.

"Chris? The food is ready!" Chris got up and hastily wiped his eyes with his front sleeves, hoping that Mark wouldn't notice how red his eyes were, or that he at least wouldn't comment on it.

When he made it into the kitchen Mark was already sitting on the other side of the table quietly eating his meal. The tension was almost suffocating him when he came in the room, but he ignored it and slowly walked towards his place and sat down. Mark was reading some articles he had with him about bacteria surviving under harsh conditions so Chris started to eat quietly without really tasting anything.

During the meal he noticed a couple of things. For the entire time that they were there Mark had been reading the same paragraph over and over, every time Chris even thought of starting to talk to him he would look like he was becoming more engrossed with it, and Mark wouldn't even look him in the eye during the entire meal. It was the most subdued they had been since their first night alone on Mars.

By the time they were both done Chris was becoming more tired, so he suggested that they would go to sleep a little earlier.

"Good idea, big day tomorrow, huh?" Mark asked, and Chris could see how he was faking his happiness. "Why don't we just watch one more episode of 'happy days' before going to bed early?"

"I don't know." Chris said unsure. "Maybe it's best if I sleep in my own bed for tonight." He moved to get to the top bed, but Mark held him by his wrist gently before he could move away.

"Wait, could you just, let me hold you tonight. Please." Mark said, and he sounded so desperate, that Chris felt no choice but to comply.

He layed down next to Mark, and Mark quickly pulled Chris against his chest and laid an arm around his shoulders.

"Mark? Are you alright?" Chris asked sleepily. He was lying comfortable, and he felt warm and safe, so he didn't realize how quickly he was falling asleep. He hadn't even heard Mark answering his question, the last thing he remembered was Mark slowly stroking his hair and holding him close.

* * *

  
Mark waited for half an hour to be sure that Chris really was asleep before getting up again. He would have loved to hold Chris in his arms for just a while longer, but he couldn't. He had work to do. He heard Chris whining softly as he got up and left him, and he had to convince himself that he had to get up and away now, or he wouldn't be able to get everything done in time.

Chris was going to hate him for what he was about to do, but at least he was going to be alive to hate him. Mark would rather have Chris being alive and hating him, than Chris being dead and caring for him.

He had almost called of his plan earlier when he saw Chris coming into the kitchen with red eyes, a sure sign that he had been crying. Because of Mark. Mark felt he was officially the biggest jerk on this planet. Mark was that close to just telling Chris what he had done, but Chris would've been disgusted by his actions and he would have stopped him. The only thing that had stopped Mark from spilling his guts was the thought of Chris dying and all of it being Mark's fault.

It was his fault that Chris was stuck here in the first place, so it was his responsibility to get Chris safe home. And if he had to lie and cheat to protect him, than that was what he was going to do, and that was what he had done.

He could only hope that Chris would forgive him.

Mark took a piece of paper, and wrote all the instructions that he could possible think about that Chris would need down. Then he took another piece of paper and stared at it for a long time.

Eventually he wrote the goodbye note that he was going to leave for Chris to find. He confessed everything: how he loved Chris,and didn't want him to die on Mars because of him, how Chris was allowed to yell at Mark as much as his heart desired when he got back, and at last how he had drugged Chris's dinner last night, because he knew that Chris was a light sleeper and he wanted to sneak out and be far gone with Rover 2 before there was even the slightest chance of Chris waking up, because he didn't want Chris to go and retrieve Pathfinder.

After that Mark went to the kitchen and put everything he might need for his trip into one of the boxes. Then he went outside and placed a couple of solar panels on the roof. He wanted Chris to have enough of them in case he didn't make it, so he would just recharge the batteries the entire day and drive at night. Lastly he went back inside, took his stuff with him, and left.

And all the while, chris kept on sleeping. He didn't hear Mark putting on his EVA-suit, didn't feel the way mark put a hand on his cheek one last time and kissed him softly on his forehead, and he didn't realize until much later, waking up disoriented, that Mark had left a note for him, and that he was already long gone on his way to pathfinder by the time he was out of bed. Chris hugged his pillow a little tighter as mark made his way out of the airlock, and he slept soundly through the rest of the night.


	18. Chapter 15

Chris woke up just after midday on sol 80 and stretched out slowly before burying his head deeper under the blankets. It's been a long time since he had slept so long, and it had done him some good. The only thing that would make this even better was Mark lying next to him.

“Mark?” he called out sleepily. He sat up on the bed after he heard no response, and blinked blearily around the room. After getting out of their bed he started to make his way towards the kitchen, hoping to find Mark there.

“Hey, Mark? I’m sorry about yester-“ Chris stopped talking as soon as he saw that no one was in the kitchen. “Mark?” He called out again, but with a lot more force and an edge of panic in his voice this time.

Where could he be?

Chris ran back towards their sleeping quarters and saw a letter lying next to their bed on the floor. “No” he whispered as he picked the paper up with shaking hands and read it.

And read it again.

“No! Nonono, Mark you stupid idiot!” Chris yelled. He felt himself starting to panic, so he dropped the letter and quickly made his way towards the airlock. Maybe Mark was still there; maybe he still had time to stop him and his foolish plan. He put on one of the EVA-suits and opened the door to the airlock. Once he was outside he could see that the Rover wasn’t anywhere in sight, but he told himself firmly that that didn’t mean anything.

Maybe Mark was just busy moving the Rover to the other side of the Hab to recharge. Chris tried so hard not to think about the letter and the fact that the Rover had already been fully recharged as he ran towards the other side of the Hab in desperation, but it kept nagging him in the back of his mind.

It wasn’t there.

When he got back at airlock 1 he noticed something in the sand where the Rover should have been. There was one set of tracks that left in the same direction that Ares Vallis was located.

There was nothing else visible on the horizon, apart from miles and miles of sand.  Nothing else. Chris started to run after the tracks and begged for Mark not to leave him, but Mark was too far gone to hear him.

He was gone.

He had left.

Chris fell to his knees as he stared blankly at the tracks that where leading towards the Ares Vallis. Mark had been long gone by now, there was no way he was going to be able to catch up with him. Rover 1 was broken beyond repair, and even if Chris would by some miracle succeed in fixing it, he still wouldn’t be able to go after Mark; he had the battery from Rover 1 as well after all.

Logically he knew that the only thing he could do was waiting for Mark to return to him. He hated it.

After sitting outside for god knows how long Chris made his way back towards the Hab. He went to their bedroom and looked at the letter that Mark had left him, which was lying on the ground in front of him.

Mark Watney was a fucking idiot.

He stood there and looked around the room. Something was wrong, it felt wrong somehow without Mark.

Chris felt himself get madder the longer he stood there. Who did Mark think that he was? He had no right! They talked about it, Chris was supposed to go, and Mark was supposed to stay in the Hab. He should have told Chris instead of going behind his back. But, a little nagging voice inside of Chris’s head reminded him, he was telling you, and you didn’t listen, right?

 But Mark? Claiming he loved Chris, and then just leaving him and doing what he wants instead of talking it through with Chris like adults. And that stupid letter. If he died it wouldn’t be Mark’s fault. How could he still think that? Chris had told him he wasn’t to be blamed. And he didn’t even want to yell at Mark, he just wanted him back. And using doxepin to drug him…

Chris placed his hands on the back of the chair in front of their desk and tried to reign in his temper.

This situation was so fucked up.

He took a hold of the chair, and threw it against the door with as much force as he could muster. It didn’t even leave a dent in the door. It was infuriating. And then Chris screamed and started to throw stuff around. He lost himself in the mindlessness of it, and it helped him. He felt good destroying something the same way that Mark had hurt him.

When he came back to himself he noticed that their entire bedroom was in shambles, but cleaning everything back up would just make him angry again, so his made his way towards the kitchen to sulk around.

For God’s sake, Mark wasn’t even gone for a couple of hours and he was already starting to lose his mind. Probably. He didn’t exactly know how long Mark had been gone by now.

When he got there, he realized how useless it was to be mad at Mark when Mark wasn’t even here. Being mad wouldn’t help him or Mark to survive. He made his way towards the cupboard and recounted all of their food so that he could note down how much Mark had taken with him.

There was just enough food gone for the amount of time it took to travel towards Ares Vallis and back. Mark hadn’t taken a lot of reserves with him, and his meal consisted mostly of potatoes. Of course, if Mark was going to die, he was going to leave as much food as he could with Chris. Stupid self-sacrificing idiot.

Chris made himself some coffee and went towards their communication’s controllers. He opened the program that monitored the Rovers and started it up. He might not be able to do much, but he could do this. As soon as Mark was back within 35 km of the Hab he would know.


	19. chapter 16

It had been a week since Mark had left and Chris had been keeping himself busy.

After moping around for a while (not that he’ll ever admit to that) he had started to go about his day as he usually would, and started on the experiments NASA had planned for them. Between him and Mark a lot of their initial work was getting done; and all the experiments were almost complete. He had no idea what they were going to do afterwards for entertainment; but he was sure that between Mark and him they’d be able to figure something out.

It was different, being alone in the Hab. When he was there with Mark everything was much quieter then when they had been here with the entire crew; but there was still some human contact. Now everything was just quiet, there was nothing but silence and it was driving Chris up the wall. He was glad he wasn’t alone on Mars, because he didn’t think he’d be able to live with this kind of silence for four years. Sure, he had music, but it wasn’t the same as hearing another human voice, talking to him, touching him…

He didn’t like being alone.

He didn’t like the silence while working at all; so he had scrolled through all the recorded logs from the first eighteen sols and started to play them through the Hab. He didn’t like the quietness, and he wasn’t about to irritate himself with disco music, so he just settled to listening to the rest of their crew talking quietly in the background while he worked during the day. Hearing his crew, his _family_ , talking was surprisingly soothing.

Missing them felt like he was missing a limp. He ached for them, and he was continually aware that they weren’t here and some days it hurt a lot more than others.

He wasn’t going to pull up Mark’s logs though, no reason to distract himself with those.

There had been a small storm on sol 82 that lasted a bit more than 2 days; and when Chris had gotten outside to clean the solar panels he could see that the tracks towards Ares Vallis were gone. He had trouble thinking about how that made him feel. On the one hand it made him sad, because it felt like he had lost some sort of connection to Mark. But on the other hand it made him angry with Mars and himself. With himself, because his happiness shouldn’t depend on such a trivial thing; and with Mars because he blamed this planet for almost everything bad that happened to him.

Right now he had been working on the experiments that Commander Lewis had been looking forwards to the most: exposing the Martian sand to different environments than those on Mars and observing the reactions.

He had gone out early this morning to get 7 samples of 100 gram each, and had started the process immediately. The interesting part of this experiment was that they could also observe the long term effect of the rocks and sand in these different environments, seeing as they were on Mars for a lot longer than one month.

Right now he was listening to one of the first logs of Vogel; where he explained how he and Commander Lewis had put the Hab canvas together on sol 1.

He stopped working as he listened to Vogel continuing to talk about the canvas.

Their check-ups of the Hab had been designed to examine all the systems that could possible fail within 31 days, but Mark and he hadn’t been checking on everything. During their mission there had been no need to check the Hab itself: the Hab was designed to last at least 3 months before it would start to fail, and had been tested for that amount of time before they had sent it up to Mars. This also meant that there was no reason to check up on the Hab canvas during their mission.

Chris felt himself panicking when he realized that when he was checking inspecting everything around the Hab for damage; he had never even thought about checking the Hab itself.

He suppressed a shudder as he thought about something being wrong with the canvas. They had almost been here for 3 months, and he didn’t know if the Hab would be able to stand longer on Mars without literally tearing apart. And if there was even one leak he’d be dead immediately.

It suddenly didn’t seem that bad that Mark had left; at least Chris knew for certain that there were no tears in the Rover, and in the meantime he was able to check the canvas of the Hab and stabilize it in case that was necessary.

He realized that he had to check everything over if he wanted to be absolutely sure that they were safe, so he quickly finished his tests and made his way outside to inspect the canvas, hoping it was safe.

It wasn’t.

He had started to look for possible tears in the canvas; and had found one in Airlock 1; the airlock that Mark and him had been using for most of their extended stay on Mars. The tear wasn’t all the way through yet; so theoretically he should still be able to use Airlock 1; but it looked close to tearing even further. He wasn’t going to risk it.

Now; the Hab had 3 Airlocks so he was still able to use Airlock 2 and Airlock 3 while trying to repair Airlock 1. And with repairs he means taping duct tape across the tear. The next week he had spent going through all the notes of the entire crew in the hope of finding something to fix the tear; but so far he had found nothing. For now he had been using the other airlocks when he needed to do an EVA; and he wasn’t going to use Airlock 1 anymore until he was completely certain that it would be safe to use again.

In the next couple of weeks he had been so busy with looking after the potato plants, checking on the rest of the Hab and going through everyone’s notes that he almost missed Rover 2 riding back into the Acidalia Planitia.

Chris had been going through his morning routine of checking up on all the plants and the humidity level in their little farms when he heard an alarm go off. At first he had thought that the Hab was breeching, but he immediately dismissed that idea: he would have been dead by now.

Still, he made his way towards the control panels to see what was going on; and he saw that the alarm he had set up about 2 weeks ago was going off. Rover 2 was back within reach of the trackers.

He quickly went to put his EVA suit on; almost used Airlock 1 in his haste before he remembered the tear; and made his way towards Airlock 2 before dashing outside and seeing Rover 2 riding closer towards the Hab.

He could see that Mark had pathfinder with him. So the mission had been a success. Still, Chris wasn’t going to go easy on this with Mark. To say that he was pissed off would have been an understatement. He stood there and watched as the Rover pulled to a stop in front of Airlock 1; and as Mark ( _don’t leave. Please don’t leave me. Never again_ ) got out of the Rover and started to make his way towards him.

Chris stood there, staring dumfound at Mark as he thought about the last time he had seen Mark.

He thougt about Mark leaving without _really_ saying goodbye. About the doxepine.

He thougth about the letter.

And then he thought about all the scenarios his brain had thought up, while he was laying in his bed at night; worrying about Mark. Wondering if Mark was thinking about him as well.


	20. Chapter 17

It had taken Mark 2 weeks to reach the last known location of Pathfinder; and the trip there had been one of the worst ones in his life. What he hadn’t quite realized was how difficult it was going to be to live inside the Rover for 2 weeks. He had no idea how he and Chris were going to get to the Ares IV landing site in one piece. He was pretty sure his back wasn't going to make it in one piece.

In his haste to leave the Hab he hadn’t thought about bringing anything with him for entertainment. No books, no music, not even his notes to keep him busy. This sucked, because at this point in time he would even prefer disco music over the silence that he woke up with every day. This also meant that he had nothing with him to distract him from his thoughts.

The RTG was burning along nicely; too nicely in fact. It was _just_ a bit too warm inside the rover; which made him sweaty and moody.

And riding the Rover for almost 2 weeks in a row wasn’t exactly a fun experience, so all in all he had been in a shitty mood ever since he left the Hab. This was partly because of the travel conditions and partly because he knew that Chris had been making the right call when he suggested that he should go to retrieve pathfinder. It was more logical for Mark to tend after the plants and for Chris to go after pathfinder; but Mark couldn’t do that. He was willing to do anything to ensure Chris’ continued safety.

Even if it meant playing 'I spy' with himself when all he could see was red rocks and sand. 

And now he was pulling Rover 2 to a stop as he looked outside the window and saw Ares Vallis spread out before him. According to his coordinates he should be only a couple of meters from Pathfinder’s last known location.

He had been using Phobos and Deneb as additional ways to navigate himself towards Pathfinder and on sol 94 he had (finally) arrived at his destination. When he got out of the rover he looked around and saw miles and miles of sand.

Mark frowned as he looked around the area and recognized some of the mountains in Pathfinder’s pictures. So he was definitely in the Ares Vallis; only Pathfinder wasn’t there.

Mark started walking towards the west and kept looking out for something that might clue him in to pathfinder’s location; but he didn’t find anything.

There were little heaps of sand everywhere and any of them could be Pathfinder covered by sand. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Mark suddenly felt stupid for bringing so little food with him. He might be stuck here a long time looking for Pathfinder.

He had been walking around, wondering where to start when his foot had gotten stuck on a sail. He bent down and picked it up, revealing more of the sail lying around. He started to follow the cords of what he now realized was the parachute that landed pathfinder on Mars, before stopping in front of one particular heap of sand.

“Well, that was easy.” Mark said out loud, smiling at his right before remembering he was alone.

He ran back towards the Rover; parked it closer and started to dig out Pathfinder. After a while he saw a part of the solar panel that Pathfinder had used to recharge every day.

When they had lost contact in 1997, they thought it was because of battery failure. It had still worked 3 times longer than anyone had expected; so perhaps Pathfinder would still be able to communicate with earth.

The work went faster after he got a shovel out of the Rover, but it still took him a day and a half to get most of the sand out of the way. Afterwards he used a crane to place Pathfinder on the back of the Rover.

And on the morning of sol 96, Mark rode out of the Ares Vallis.

As he left the Valley; he looked back one more time to Pathfinder’s landing place. It was weird thinking about it. He had been the first person; the first human being in history, to walk around in this valley. It was a humbling thought.

It had taken him almost 2 weeks to get back to the Ares III landing site. He had started to search for a rock that he could give Commander Lewis as a piece offering while he was waiting for the solar panels to load up the batteries of the Rover. He had found a little cavern that had some pretty beautiful rocks, so he took one for every member of the team.

He wondered what Lewis would think of the rock. He didn’t know if she’d like it, hell, he didn’t know anything about rocks. But Chris had suggested that they’d bring a rock for Lewis and he hadn’t forgotten about it. Commander Lewis was specialized in geology; and they all knew how she always got way too excited for any scientific fact that came even remotely close to her field.

A rock is a perfect sorry-i-made-you-grieve-for-me gift for her.

 He had walked back towards the rover that day with the 6 rocks that he had deemed the most worthy and laid them next to him before getting ready and continuing to drive towards the Hab. He arrived in Acidalia Planitia in the morning of sol 109.

Mark tried hard to keep everything together. Christ, he was only gone for a month and he was getting sappy over going home again. Because the Hab was his home now. And... he was glad to be back again.

By the time Mark had taken the rocks in his hands and had gotten out of the Rover, Chris was already standing outside.

He had hoped Chris would swoon in his arms when he got home, he had expected Chris to start yelling at him immediately, and he had feared Chris being disgusted with him because of his actions.

But this was even worse than every goddamn scenario he had thought of. Chris was just staring blankly at him, like Mark being there hadn’t really sunk in yet. He wasn’t reaching out for him. It was quiet between them.

Mark slowly walked towards him, staying silent in fear of saying something stupid and setting Chris of. Chris waited until he was close enough, didn’t say a word and suddenly took his hand before dragging him towards the back of the Hab. He opened Airlock 2 and dragged Mark inside before closing the outer door.

“Chris?” Mark asked Chris quietly as they waited for the pressure to rise.

“Chris I’m sor-“

“DON’T!” Chris yelled suddenly. Mark could see Chris trying to stay calm and failing. Eventually he looked at Mark with a forced kind of calmness. “Don’t. Don’t talk to me right now.”

But Mark almost didn’t hear him. It was the first time Chris had looked at him; and he could see the raw hurt in his eyes. He had to keep himself from flinching in front of Chris. It was his fault Chris was hurt, this one was on him.

Once they were inside Chris took of his own EVA-suit, and before Mark could do anything Chris had started to strip him of his suit too. He clasped their hands back together and started to drag Mark towards the medical bay.

“What? Oh, I’m fine Chris, no worries.”

 But he was having none of it. He check Mark over completely, found some heavy bruising on his back that Mark hadn’t even known was there, and told him to get some rest after his trip before going to the kitchen to get him some food.

Mark sneaked back towards airlock 2 to get the rock out of his EVA-suit, he had found for Chris and made his way towards the kitchen.

“Chris?” He asked again, but Chris stayed silent. Mark started to wonder what he would have to do to make it up to him, before he remembered the gift in his hands. “I have a peace offering.” He said hesitantly, holding the rock up so that Chris could see it.

Mark saw his eyes darkening. Wrong thing to say. Oops.

“A rock? You... Jesus, Mark! After that shit you pulled, you bring a rock back and think that’s going to be it?”

“… So you don’t like it?”

“I don’t care about that stupid rock! Why did you do it? You could have died!” Chris yelled at him. He was a mess. Now that Mark could get a closer look at him, he could see how messy his hair was, his eyes where red and puffy and he looked lost.

“I did it because I wanted to protect you, I wanted to keep you safe!”

“And What on earth gave you the idea that I don’t want the same for you?”

That stopped Mark from saying a quick retort, and Chris continued more quietly. “What would you have done if I was the one who drugged you and then left on a dangerous mission without saying goodbye?”

“But I did say goodbye, I left a note!”

“It’s not the same, Mark.” Chris said. Just then the microwave started to beep and Chris took the meal out of it and pushed it in Mark’s direction from across the table. “Here, eat something. You didn’t take enough food with you.”

Then he turned to leave.

“Wait, Chris, hold up!” Chris turned around and looked at him. “Will you stay here? Please? I don’t mind the yelling.”

“I…I don’t..” Chris said, and for a moment Mark feared that Chris would walk away. He didn’t want to be alone again. But Chris seemed to have made up his mind, and sat back down in one of the chairs across from him. “I’ll stay for a while.”

Mark would go outside to work on Pathfinder after he was finished eating something else than potatoes, thank god. He knew that they’d have to make up rather sooner than later, and he didn’t like the way Chris had been looking at him.

But hey, at least he was there.


	21. interlude pt. 3

“How are our boys doing?” Venkat asked, as he sat down next to Mindy.

“Well, whoever stayed at the Hab has cleaned the solar panels after a dust storm, and has now, for whatever reason, started to use Airlock 2 instead of Airlock 1.”

“What? Why would he do that? That doesn’t make any sense, unless Airlock 1 is compromised…” Venkat said, he frowned slightly as he took note of the situation; and made plans for a team of scientists to figure out what could be wrong with the Airlock. If an airlock was compromised; the Hab was compromised. They couldn’t contact them now, but they could still try to work out as many solutions as possible to further aid their survival.

“Aaaaand whoever is driving the Rover has started moving again.” Mindy said, not taking her eyes of the screen as she refreshed the images. Again. “I feel like a stalker. A space stalker. I am using satellites to constantly watch 2 astronauts.”

“Do we know where the hell he is going yet?” Venkat asked her pointedly.

“He hasn’t changed course for tirtheen days.”

“I don’t understand, he’s nowhere near the Ares IV.”

“Unless he’s taking a direct route he might be trying to avoid some obstacle?” Mindy speculated. She spent a lot of her time figuring out what Beck and Watney were doing.

“What obstacle?” Venkat asked her. “The Acidalia Planitia, there’s nothing out there except the…”

“What?” Mindy watched as Venkat head shot up suddenly, and looked at her determinately before speaking again.

“I need a map.”

“Uhm, sure, I can pull up-“ Mindy started; but Venkat had already gotten up and started walking away from her work place.

“Walk with me, Mindy!” He yelled, before rushing down the corridor.

“Of course.” Mindy answered, even though he couldn’t hear her anymore. She wondered why the weird stuff always happened when she was working. She left her work station, and started to make her way towards… the cafeteria. She got there in time to watch Venkat take one of the pictures down, and borrowing a black marker from someone who was working there.

“All right, Mindy. Where’s the Hab?” Mindy pointed somewhere on the map, and Venkat circled it with the marker. “And where is our mystery driver?”

“uhm, here!” she said, and watched as Venkat pulled a line from the Hab through the Rover and stopped by some mountains. Then he threw the marker down.

“Okay, I know where he’s going. I need to get an airplane.”

And then he left, leaving Mindy standing there, staring at the map and wondering what she had missed.

 

* * *

 

 

Venkat was sitting next to Tim as he watched the JPL crew working on the replica of Pathfinder. He had taken the first flight to California; and had immediately gotten the old team that worked with Pathfinder back together.

He nervously tapped his fingers on the table as he watched the screen starting up. It was taking a while, god save him from 20th century technology.

**Broadcasting status, listening for telemetry signal…**

**Listening for telemetry signal…**

**Listening for telemetry signal…**

**Listening for telemetry signal…**

**Signal acquired.**

Everyone in the room started cheering as they noticed that they had successfully contacted Pathfinder again. Venkat kept staring at the computer as everyone in the room stood up to look as the replica of Pathfinder started to spin.

**Incoming.**


	22. Chapter 18

Things had been tense between them. After their fight, Mark had gone to take a shower. It has been a month since he's been able to do that, so he was going to make the most of it. He used some of Lewis’ shampoo and body gel (coconut) to get the worst smell of him. The warm water eased him, his back had been hurting him since the first week of his Pathfinder mission, and it felt amazing to ease of some of the stiffness between his shoulder blades.

When he got out he saw that Chris had already gone back to the lab. He winced as he slowly put his clothes back on. Yeah, his back was going to hurt him for a while.

He slowly made his way towards Airlock 2, and went outside so that he could start up Pathfinder. Chris came out of the Hab some time later with a couple of signs that he had written on. He was quietly sitting next to Airlock 1 as Mark started to work on Pathfinder by opening its panels.

He had noticed the duct tape on Airlock 1 and Chris going around the Hab to use Airlock 2; so he wasn’t going to be an idiot and use it. Something had happened when he was gone, but he knows that Chris would have told him if it was essential, no matter how mad he was at Mark right now. It had irritated him a bit, when he thought about how they would need to walk around the Hab every time they would need to use Pathfinder.

Come to think about it, he should probably have started installing Pathfinder next to Airlock 2. Oh well.

He would have to ask about Airlock 1 once things between them had cooled down a bit. He didn’t know how long that was going to take, but it was pretty hard trying to avoid someone if you’re the only 2 people on an entire planet and the two of you have to live in close quarters with each other, so Mark was going to get a lot of opportunities to make up.

He just hoped he didn’t fuck this up again.

He wrecked open the outside panels, and connected Pathfinder’s battery with one of the solar panels at the Hab. He pointed the antenna towards Earth, and started waiting until Pathfinder would have enough energy to send a signal boost.

“Chris? It’s done.” Mark said, as he turned back to watch where Chris was leaning with his back against Airlock 1.

“So what now?” Chris asked as he got closer to him, holding 3 signs in his hand. Mark could see that he had used some duct tape to tape 3 bars against the backside… what?

“Now we wait for the… aha!” He said as Pathfinder started to beep and lights flickered on. The camera started to spin around and Mark felt himself panic for a moment. “Shit! We’ve got to…oh. Thanks” Mark said as Chris held out the signs for him with a raised eyebrow and an amused smirk.

That was, until he seemed to remember himself again, and his posture became more distant.

“Thank you.” Mark said as he quietly took over the signs, and planted them in front of the camera. He tried to push his feelings away and focus on Pathfinder, but there wasn’t anything else that needed to be done now.

There were 3 signs: ‘Are you receiving us?’, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. The last one was definitely Marks least favorite. He planted them all at a reasonable distance from each other so that they would know where the camera was pointed. It would take about 32 minutes before the signal would get to earth and their response would get back to him; so Mark settled in to wait.

Chris sat down next to him stiffly, and waited with him in silence. After a while of Mark debating with himself what conversation topic would make Chris the least mad at him, at least until Chris turned to him and started to speak.

“Hey, we need to talk.” Chris said from where he was sitting, still looking at Pathfinder.

Mark felt himself blanch at that. He… should have expected it. And really, why would Chris have wanted to stay with him in the first place? He braced himself for it. If he showed that it was alright, than Chris wouldn’t be feeling guilty thinking he hurt Mark.

 “Hey you okay?” Chris asked him worriedly. ‘Oh great,’ Mark thought; ‘now you made him worry again.’

“I’m fine, it’s alright. I understand.” He said, he tried to smile at Chris but he felt it came as more of a grimace.

“What? No, Mark! We need to talk about the Hab. Something is wrong with Airlock 1.”Chris assured him hurriedly. He looked at Mark more closely “Why would you think I would want to break up with you?”

“I hurt you.” Mark said simply.

Chris sighed as he took one of Mark’s hands in his, and gave it a small squeeze before holding it. Mark felt himself sigh as Chris held him. It didn’t matter that they were still wearing their suits. The fact that Chris still wanted to hold him was enough for Mark to make him sigh contently.

“Yeah, you hurt me, and in a pretty shitty way. But that doesn’t mean I think we should just give up on this because of one fight. I’m not going to let you fall because you’re being an asshole. I kind of already knew that.”

 “So you’re not mad at me anymore?” mark asked hopefully. It was more than he deserved either way, but he would take what he could get.

“No, I’m still pissed. Now, will you let me tell you what happened?”

“Sure” mark drawled, leaning back with his elbows into the sand. Chris still loved him, despite everything he had done. Things were finally going great. Nothing was going to ruin his mood now.

“Airlock 1 might be breeched if we use it again.” Chris said quickly. Like it would make it any less worse if he said it fast enough.

‘Except for that.’ Mark thought as he quickly shot up again.

“What?” he said, a lot more harshly than he meant to. He got up and walked towards the duct tape that was on Airlock 1. “What happened here anyway?” he asked quickly. Chris had gotten up after him and was standing behind him, looking guilty.

“I was listening to everybody’s logs, and I remembered that the Hab wasn’t supposed to last long term, so I checked to see if the Hab itself was still in top working condition, and it wasn’t."

"There was a tiny tear there." Chris said, pointing towards the duct tape. "It hasn't gone through all the layers of the airlock yet, but every time we use the airlock, with each decompression cycle, it will become a bit bigger, deeper, and it could be breeched eventually.”

Mark shuddered as he thought about Chris being in the Hab, and Airlock 1 breeching… No! It hadn’t happened. Chris was safe, he was right there.

He pushed those thoughts away, as he concentrated on the problem and tried to find a solution.

“We can contact NASA about this problem using Pathfinder, see if they have any bright ideas. For now we’ll just leave the duct tape on.”

“Seriously? I was actually hoping for a bit more input of this one. We really have no way of fixing it?”

“Nope!” Mark said, as he looked back at Chris with mirth in his eyes; “You really shouldn’t underestimate the power of duct tape, young padawan.”

Chris smiled back at him. “I thought I already told you we can’t just keep on using duct tape to fix all our problems?”

“Don’t hate on the duct tape, Chris.” Mark said as he looked back at the camera and stopped in his tracks. It had moved. He ran back towards Pathfinder, looked at the camera, then at the signs and back again.

It had worked.

They had successfully contacted NASA.

“Chris?” he said with a strangled voice as he pointed at the camera. “Do you see the camera pointing at ‘yes’ too or am I hallucinating?”

Chris came closer to him as he looked at Mark. “I…” Chris took one look at the camera and the signs, and then he was literally jumping around in joy. He grabbed Mark’s shoulders while jumping up and down, yelling “We did it! We did it!” over and over again in his ear. Mark was trying and failing to keep the smile from his face at seeing Chris so happy.

Chris tried to hug him, but all that resulted in was them hitting each other in the head with their helmets. Mark couldn’t hold his laugh in at that, and Chris started laughing with him. This was ridiculous! He succeeded in hugging Chris more carefully, and tightened his arms around him.

 

* * *

 

 

In the JPL-center in California Venkat Kapoor looked at the replica of Pathfinder before him after he had ordered Tim to point the camera to ‘Yes’.

“- and all I’m saying is that this is going to take half an hour roundtrip communications time, all they can do is ask ‘yes-no’ questions, and all we can do is point the camera.”

"Tim, stay quiet.” Venkat ordered as he thought about how they could make optimal use of their connection with Pathfinder. What would make communication easier?

“I’m just saying that it’s going to be nearly impossible holding complex astrophysical engineering conversations using a camera from 1996.”

“Tim, will you do everyone a favor and kindly _shut up_?” Venkat asked as he turned towards Tim. “And can you make another picture? Maybe they’re standing in front of the camera now. Keep on taking pictures until we have another answer from them.”

The next picture that came in had the entire room falling silent. Watney and Beck were both visible, for the first time in months. The occupants of the room began to murmur, and Tim leaned back until he was close to Venkat before speaking up again.

“Are they... hugging?”


	23. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been such a long time!  
> This story is going to update irregularly, but I'm definitely planning on finishing it, so no worries there.  
> I would also like to thank everyone who has been commenting and giving kudos.  
> You guys are the best!

Chris and Mark made their way back towards Airlock 2 afterwards so that they could discuss a better way to contact NASA using pathfinder.

  
After they had parted Chris held onto Mark’s hands and squeezed briefly before letting go. He was torn between being mad at Mark and never letting him out of his sight again, which was confusing him beyond belief. He had no idea how he was supposed to act around Mark anymore.

  
“How are we going to communicate with them?” Mark asked as they stopped in front of the airlock of the Hab. He was looking better after taking a shower; but Chris could see the way he was holding himself clearly: his back was hurting him more than he was letting on. He made a mental note to make sure Mark took some pain killers before going to sleep tonight.

  
“We can’t keep on asking yes-no questions, the communication would go way to slow.” Chris pointed out. “We could, however, use some kind of alphabet, and then NASA can point their camera in the right direction.” Chris said, getting more excited the longer he kept talking.

  
“We can’t make an alphabet.” Mark said. “Our alphabet has 26 characters plus a question mark, which would mean that we only have 13 degrees of arch available. That’s way to narrow, we’ll never know where the camera is pointing.”

  
"We could use Morse" Chris suggested.

  
"That could work" Mark murmured, already thinking about all the possibilities. "and then NASA could find a way to make it easier to communicate and tell us."

Chris looked at Mark for a moment. Now was not the time to be mad at him, they had work to do. They needed to figure out a way to communicate with NASA, and Chris being pissed of with Mark wasn't going to help matters along, even though what Mark had done was awful. Besides, he was pretty sure Mark was going to do everything he could to make it up to him. He decided to worry about their fight later and concentrate on their current problems.

  
"I can't wait for the communications to come back up online." Chris said, thinking about all the possibilities communication would bring them. "We could contact our families, it's been ages since our last mail drop, and the crew! They must be so worried about us."

  
"I hope they haven't damaged the Hermes too much, who knows what they're doing without us. And I just know that Martinez is going to mess with my plants."

  
"God help us all if something would happen to your plants."

  
"Hey! I'll have you know that botany is a very respected scientific field, and without plants there wouldn't even be life on earth." Mark said while he looked at Chris, the amusement evident in his eyes.

  
"Now you're just sounding like a hippie." Chris shot back.

  
"You should have seen me in college. Most of my class was filled with hippies who wanted to save the world by planting every kind of plant all over the world. It was easier to sometimes go along with it.  Most of the time I would hang out with other students though because my roommate, who also studied botany, made our dorm look like half a jungle. that guy was nuts about plants, you could barely get to the other side of the room!"

  
"I also had a roommate, but he studied computer science. The guy never left his bedroom, but you should have seen him with a computer. I think that the only person who could give him a run for his money would be Beth."

  
Mark smiled at him and reached out to open Airlock 2, but Chris stopped his arm and looked back at the boxes of the crew lying around.

  
"Hold on." He said, and then he started to make his way back towards the boxes of the crew. "Mark, can you help me with this?" he asked, and Mark made his way towards Chris and the box that he could now see belonged to Beth.

  
"Why do we need Beth's stuff?" Mark asked as they made their way back towards the Airlock again while dragging the box between them.  
"Beth has all kinds of different communication systems with her. She showed me some different ciphers she liked on sol 4. We could go through all of them and find the one that would be the best for communicating with NASA."

"Chris, that's brilliant!" Mark exclaimed, and could see Chris' cheeks heating up under his helmet.

  
After they had gotten inside they made their way towards the kitchen and divided Beth's stuff in two and began to methodically go through everything. They went through all kinds of codes, some more interesting then others, before deciding to go with the hexadecimal system.

  
It's typically used by programmers and can be easily used to communicate, they both agreed that it would be a lot easier to use than Morse code, seeing as it had 16 symbols which brought more variety.

  
After they made their way back outside Mark had tied a rope around Pathfinder and made a line a couple of meters from it by dragging his foot in the sand, so that all the signs would be at an equal distance. Meanwhile Chris was walking behind him and counting his steps so that they could know how much distance they would have to leave between the signs.

  
Chris tried not to think about how the pictures would look that Pathfinder was no doubt taking, of them shuffling around Pathfinder, so he concentrated on Mark. This however only made him laugh but to be honest, seeing Mark toeing off the line in his space suit was kind of hilarious.

  
After putting signs for the 16 numbers and digits in a circle around Pathfinder, they settled down again and waited for NASA to take pictures and figure out their plan. They had an ASCII table and some more signs lying ready in the kitchen so that they could translate NASA's responses and formulate an answer before going outside and responding.

  
"They'll figure it out quickly, right?" Chris asked Mark who was sitting on the sand behind the signs and was watching as Chris attached a small stick with a flag on Pathfinders camera so that they could see in which direction the camera was pointing.

  
"Of course they will." Mark told Chris reassuringly. "Don't worry about it. Have you ever met the team that made Pathfinder? They're probably already composing a list of questions as we speak."

  
"If you say so." Chris said before hopping down Pathfinder and moving to sit next to Mark again. And there they sat, watching Pathfinder in silence and impatiently waiting for a response from earth.


	24. Chapter 20

Venkat sighed as he settled himself down again next to Tim and handed him one of the hot mugs before drinking from his own coffee. Watney and Beck had walked back towards the Hab, presumably to find a solution on how to communicate, and meanwhile all they could do was keep taking pictures and hoping they would get a different image than the last one.

Even if NASA found a way to communicate, there was no way they could tell Watney and Beck anything with only Pathfinder's camera as a tool, so there was nothing else to do but wait.

  
"Sir, look, they're back outside again!" Tim yelled suddenly at Venkat, who had been staring blankly at the screen for the past hour.

  
"Yes, I can see that, I'm looking at the same screen as you" Venkat said dryly. Tim averted his eyes again with a light blush on his cheeks.

  
They watched together as Watney and Beck walked back towards Pathfinder and proceeded in putting up signs with the numbers 0 to 9 and the letters A to F.

  
"What?" Venkat said softly, looking at the images in confusion, while Tim was turning Pathfinder and taking pictures from all sides.

  
"They're using hex digits." Tim told Venkat, while he kept his eyes fixed on the screen in front of him and controlled Pathfinder's movements.

  
"What?"

  
"Hexadecimal digits."

  
"That's not what I asked."

  
Tim finally tore his eyes away from his screen and looked back at Venkat who was staring at him with an irritated expression.

  
"Hexadecimal digits, It's some kind of code. Now we can send any letter of the alphabet or character that we want by using the camera to point at the correct signs, and then we would be able to communicate."

  
"Can you use this? What do you need?" Venkat asked urgently, already grabbing his phone in case he needed to make preparations of any kind.

  
"We'll need an ASCII table to translate the hex digits, and we would have to put up the signs in the same place over here, so that we could point the camera in the right direction" Tim answered promptly, already working on printing several ASCII tables that they would be using later on.

  
"I'll get the signs done, start by finding the code to ask about their status." Venkat said, as he moved away to call Teddy after sending one of the scientist after sign boards.

  
By the time Venkat had gotten back to Tim's station he already had written down different rows of numbers on a paper and was watching his colleagues putting down the signs in exactly the same place as they stood around Pathfinder on Mars, using the pictures Tim had taken.

  
"What does it say?" Venkat asked as he sat back in his place.

  
"This one says 'status'" Tim said, pointing to the first row of numbers, "and this one says 'how alive?' I didn't know what else we should ask before receiving an answer."

  
"Good work." Venkat said distractedly as he looked down at his phone again from where he was notifying everyone else. Annie had already send him a message to remind him to forward all the pictures they had to her, and Teddy was getting constant updates about their situation.

  
"Sir?" Tim said, and waited for Venkat to look up again before continuing. "There's barely any atmosphere on Mars, so there's not a lot of light reflection. They won't be able to see in which way the camera is pointing when it's dark."

  
Tim waited for Venkat to nod before continuing, "also, talking like this would take a lot of time, time we can't lose. We should find a way for communications to go smoother."

  
"I'll have someone working on it." Venkat told him as he watched how everyone had already placed signs on the correct places. "Now, send the 'status' message through." He said while turning back towards Tim.

  
After Tim send his message through, they'd have to wait about 12 minutes for that message to reach Beck and Watney, and then they'd have to wait for them to make up an answer and for that message to get back to earth.

"It's going to be a long night." Venkat said as he settled back in his chair to wait.

* * *

  
Everyone was loitering around in between the short periods of excitement as one of the messages came back. It had taken almost an entire night just to communicate, and they didn't have a lot of information, but right now their team was working on how to hack Pathfinder while Venkat was making a long-distance call with Teddy Sanders.

  
"This is all the information you've got on them?" Teddy asked as he looked at the couple of words typed out in front of him. It wasn't a lot to go on, but it was a good start at least.

  
_'status?'_

  
_'We're both in good condition. Got hit and dragged by the antenna, not the crew their fault.'_

  
_'how alive?'_

  
_'Tech was taken out because of the storm. Crew thought we were dead, survived on crops.'_

  
_'crops?'_

  
_'We planted crops from the potatoes we had taken with us from earth.'_

  
_'Bring SJRNR out. prepare rec hacking instruc. tmrrw'_

  
"Annie's going to need a lot more to satisfy the press." He said as he made eye contact with Venkat again.

  
"It's more than we've had for months. Besides, the codes are almost done. We'll be able to communicate much faster tomorrow."

  
"Is it going to work?"

  
"The code isn't much, our guesses our around 20 instructions that we'll have to type in. We're trying to make it as short as possible, obviously."

  
Teddy smiled as he looked at Venkat. The man entire frame looked exhausted, which was to be expected after working through the night.

  
"I'll go through it with Annie and Mitch over here. Good job, Venkat."

  
He saw Venkat nodding gratefully before severing the connection and turning back towards the document that was opened in front of him. They had made first contact. It felt astounding that they were both alive after everything they undoubtedly went through. Teddy allowed himself a moment to relax in his chair as he thought about the two astronauts who where stuck on earth.

He felt responsible for them, as with everyone who worked for NASA, so he would do everything in his power to get them both home safely.

  
And now that they could communicate, they could start working on a way to get them home as soon as possible.


End file.
